


Damnatio Memoriae

by lovetincture



Series: Damnatio Memoriae [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Bloodplay, Breathplay, Edgeplay, Forced Orgasm, Knifeplay, M/M, Painplay, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Sadism, Sherlock Holmes is a Bit Not Good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2019-10-25 14:21:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 55,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17726879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: Sherlock Holmes is a sociopath and a sadist, and he’s in love with John Watson. He also wants to torture him. John is surprisingly okay with this, with one caveat: He doesn’t want to remember any of it. A loving, healthy relationship, with the occasional torture session courtesy of dubiously legal pharmaceuticals. It’s all fine. Or, it would be fine, if an old enemy didn't have designs of his own on the both of them.Did it really happen if you don’t remember?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Damnatio memoriae_ is Latin for “condemnation of memory.” It was a punishment reserved for traitors and the worst criminals, the punishment of having every record of themselves expunged from history, all memory of their existence erased.
> 
> I'm not planning to do content warnings for this fic. It's a fic about consensual torture; it's potentially going to get dark, but my MO is to tend toward consent, mutual trust, and healthy-ish relationships.

When he was five, Sherlock killed a snail to see what would happen. He poured salt and salt and salt on it, and it had been terribly funny to see it shrink. And then when it at last stopped moving and he realized it was dead… well that had been _interesting_.

When he was seven, he killed a starling, and its bones crunched so prettily.

When he was ten, the neighbor’s cat went missing, and he spent a vivid afternoon dissecting its feet to see how all the parts fit together.

When he was thirteen, Redbeard ran away. Or at least, that’s what he told everyone. His parents comforted him, and he pretended to be sad. Mycroft looked askance at him, shrewd looks that followed him around the house wherever he went. He was grateful when Mycroft went back to school, breathed a sigh of relief as some tension he didn’t realize had been inhabiting his body fled.

He pulled out the little wooden box that held Redbeard’s teeth, sometimes. It seemed vulgar to keep _souvenirs_. That was something serial killers did; he read the biographies. He was a scientist, not a serial killer. He never kept souvenirs, that was his rule.

Except he had loved Redbeard quite a lot, and he missed him sometimes. Sometimes it helped to run his fingers around those teeth. He’d been selective in choosing which to keep: he kept two incisors—one top, one bottom, left- and right-hand side respectively—and one back molar from the top. If he hadn’t been embarrassed by how mawkish it was, and if he’d had any friends who would have cared to ask, Sherlock would have explained that he kept that one because it was the closest to the brain.

He didn’t believe in souls nor God—he wasn’t a fool, after all—but even Sherlock had to admit that if there was a soul, or a self, it would certainly reside in the brain. A creature’s memories made it what it was, after all. We are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. The brain was the part of Redbeard that remembered him, when he had still been able to remember anything at all. And so he kept that molar and the rest, and he put them all in the small polished wooden box Mummy had given him to store his baby teeth.

His parents didn’t understand him, but they tried to be supportive in their way. The box was a way to take an interest in his interests. He’d read the same parenting books they did. He knew what they were doing and why.

It wasn’t enough to fix what was wrong with him, to make him like everyone else, but he kept the box regardless. He stored his teeth in it as they fell out, and he put Redbeard’s in there with them. Sometimes when he was feeling alone, or sad, or angry, he liked to open the lid and stir the teeth around with a fingertip. He liked the sound they made as they rattled around, liked the cool feel of enamel against his skin. Parts of him and parts of his friend, mingled together in perpetuity. The rightness of it gave him a little shiver.

Sherlock picked up a tooth. One of his, this time. He flicked his thumbnail over the brown stain at the jagged end—dried blood and tooth root. He put it back and closed the box, tucked it back into the drawer of his bedside table where it belonged.

* * *

As he grew up, Sherlock did not escalate to killing people, as Sally Donovan would insinuate in later years. In all fairness, he might have, had he not discovered drugs first. He’d seen his diagnosis, heard it from the therapists and after school counselors Mummy and Father had sent him to: antisocial personality disorder. Sociopathy. Love wasn’t something he was neurologically programmed to feel, but when he met cocaine, Sherlock thought he could perhaps understand it for the first time.

Drugs were the first thing he really loved. They made the world go vivid and hard-edged, made everything feel brighter and more visceral. Or that’s what the cocaine did. In the case of heroin, drugs made the world go soft and blurred. It made the buzzing, itching irritation under his skin stop. Heroin made him actually understand what people meant when they talked about relaxing. It stopped the constant, pushing striving that he felt. The need to solve, to do, to move and move and move like the shark that couldn’t stop swimming or else die.

So, Sherlock found drugs, and the neighbors’ pets stopped disappearing quite so frequently. He stopped aching to sink his hands into something in the tone of ruby. Mycroft tried to get him to stop. Mummy cried, and he didn’t even need the drugs to numb that. No, that was one of the things he had always been unflinchingly good at—shutting down feelings, shutting them out.

And then one day, Sherlock found something even better than drugs.

He found detective work.

He stumbled onto it by accident. He was flying on cocaine, as he often was in those days. He solved a case almost entirely by chance. He tripped his way into Lestrade’s crime scene talking a mile a minute, and Lestrade had listened. It’d won Lestrade the case (it’d landed Sherlock in jail for possession). They found a truce. One case led to another, led to an ultimatum, led to Sherlock getting off the drugs.

It almost wasn’t a hardship to kick the habit. Almost.

Truth be told he missed it, sometimes. Missed the bite of the needle in his skin and what came after, but the crimes were better. The crimes and the thrill of the puzzle (even better-- the chase) were always going to be better.

And if being on good terms with the Metropolitan Police Department and a certain coroner with affections for him gave him access to cadavers aplenty, well. More’s the better. People looked sideways at him when he did things like disappear into the morgue with a riding crop. They did things like call him freak and psychopath, but no one actually tried to stop him, and that’s the thing that mattered.

The only thing that mattered was the work.

Until there was John.

John Watson came into his life like a gunshot, sudden and unexpected and utterly devastating.

From the minute he shot a man ( _for me_ ), Sherlock knew John was something special. Something rare and strange and never, ever dull, wrapped up just for him in an unassuming, oatmeal-colored jumper. Something _interesting_.

“You just killed a man,” Sherlock said.

“Yes, well. He wasn’t a very nice man, was he?” John said, standing at attention like the soldier he was.

Sherlock felt that rill of rightness run through him again. He knew right then that he was keeping John Watson.

* * *

John taught him the concept of Not Good (he thought he did), but Sherlock had had a working version in his head for far longer than John or anyone would suspect. Oh, he was poor at social graces—never had the patience for them, not really—but he never did the things that were truly “not good.”

At least, he didn’t do them around other people.

That was the other thing Sherlock had learned from a young age. People would forgive a bit of eccentricity, especially if it came wrapped in handsome transport and an expensive tailored suit. They would forgive a lot of eccentricity if you were useful to them. If you solved their crimes, dazzled them with brilliance, kept them from blowing their brains out with the SIG Sauer P226 they’d illegally acquired after they’d been invalided home from Afghanistan.

People would not forgive missing pets, bloodied noses, or being cut open to see what was inside.

Sherlock had learned the hard way. He’d been an honest child, possibly too honest. He didn’t have a filter, as Mummy would say. He’d tried to make friends by showing other children the squirrel carcass he’d found, or the way he could make a frog’s leg jump by pulling on the tiny, slimy tendon inside. He’d frightened away most of the other kids in the neighborhood, but there was one girl who’d stayed. Chrissy, who found the cadavers fascinating (”If you hold your nose”) and laughed at his trick with the frog.

They were fast friends. His parents were relieved that he had friends at all (even if it was just one, even if it was a girl who didn’t act like girls were supposed to act) and welcomed the brash little tomboy into their home and lives with open arms. Sherlock liked that Chrissy didn’t act how she was supposed to. He didn’t either, had never seen the point, and they formed a kind of kinship around it.

Nothing was too gross for her, although she liked to play rougher than he did. She’d drag him on adventures she made up, and they pretended to be knights or explorers or pirates—pirates was Sherlock’s favorite, and they splashed in the creek and came home muddy for a week after they’d discovered that game. They spent one idyllic summer that way, bringing home skinned knees and hair full of nettles. For one blissful summer, Sherlock was tanned and smiling and content.

And then, well. And then he went too far. He hadn’t _meant_  to do it, hadn’t meant to scare Chrissy off. He didn’t even want to hurt her. He _liked_  Chrissy. He liked her games, so he wanted to show her his. He’d filched a knife from his father’s collection, an antique scalpel, and he’d sharpened it to a gleaming edge. He tested it on his finger, and the pad of his thumb split open at the tiniest bit of pressure. He sucked the blood from his finger and wondered at the way it didn’t even hurt until later.

He brought the knife to Chrissy, along with alcohol and cotton balls, and he told her his big idea, that they’d see what was on the inside of her leg, “Like the frog,” Sherlock said.

For the first time, Chrissy looked uncertain. The ever-present smile on her face dimmed, and her eyebrows knitted together. “Sherlock, you can’t _do_  that.”

“But why not?” Sherlock asked. “It’s just to look. See, I even brought plasters.” And it was true, he had. He held them up for her to see.

Chrissy narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. “Well, why can’t we look on you?” she asked.

“Because I’ve done this more times than you,” Sherlock said. “We can try on me next time.”

Chrissy hesitated.

“What are you, chicken?”

A spark lit in her eye, and she jutted her chin out. “ _No_ , I’m not chicken. Fine, do it.” She sat down on a nearby tree root and held out her leg. “But just a little cut, alright?”

Sherlock nodded, solemn. He studied her leg. It was hairless and the skin was nut-brown, deeply tanned from long days in the sun. There was a plaster clinging valiantly to her knee, falling off but refusing to quit just yet. The leftover adhesive was greyish and flecked with lint and dirt. Sherlock sat on the dirt in front of her and flicked open the cap to the bottle of isopropyl. He soaked one of the cotton pads with it, and the astringent scent of alcohol flooded his nose immediately. He swabbed Chrissy’s leg with it, and she jumped as the cool liquid touched her skin. Sherlock was careful and methodical, rubbing the area carefully to get rid of any chance of contamination. He liked Chrissy. He didn’t want her to get sick.

He took the open bottle of isopropyl and poured it over the scalpel to disinfect that too.

“Hey!” Chrissy protested. “Isn’t that bad for the plants?”

Sherlock considered. “Probably,” he admitted. “Sorry.”

She shrugged. “Well. What are you waiting for?”

“For the alcohol to dry,” Sherlock said.

They waited, and Chrissy kicked her heels against the ground, scuffing up her white shoes in a way her mum would yell at her for later. “Done?” she asked at last.

“Done.” Sherlock nodded. He scooted closer until his nose was inches from her skin and just looked. A thrill of anticipation ran through him, and he had to forcibly still his muscles to keep from shivering.

“Well?” She said finally. “Are you going to get on with it or what?”

Sherlock shook himself out of it. He set the blade of the scalpel against her skin and drew it slowly down, watching a thin line of red form. Chrissy hissed, a sharp intake of breath, but she held still and didn’t flinch. Sherlock was impressed. But he couldn’t _see_  anything; it was just a small cut, so he pulled the knife a little further until a two inch long incision had formed on her anterior tibialis.

He set the knife down carefully beside him and just looked. The giddy, nervous anticipation from earlier hadn’t gone away, just grown, and Sherlock’s palms tingled with it. He wanted to rub them on his thighs to get rid of the feeling, but he was concerned about contamination.

“Well?” Chrissy said again. “Are you done yet? Can you hurry up.” If he’d been paying attention, if he hadn’t been distracted, if he’d listened—really _listened_  to what she was actually saying—but he didn’t. He didn’t hear the anxiety in Chrissy’s voice, the mounting agitation. He was too caught up in his own hot, itchy enjoyment to be bothered to notice.

“Just a second,” Sherlock had said instead, distracted. “I can’t see. If I can just—” He pushed his two index fingers into the wound and tried to spread the flesh apart with his hands, and Chrissy kicked him in the face.

“ _Ow_. What the _hell_ , Sherlock?” She leapt to her feet, and what he remembered best wasn’t the frightened, angry look on her face. Not her green eyes flashing in anger, nor her lips gone white where they were pressed together. It was the rivulet of bright liquid red running down her leg, looking so beautiful in the dappled light from the trees.

Sherlock held his head where she’d kicked. His eye was smarting something fierce. “I was just looking,” he said. “It was just a game, like with the frogs.”

She shook her head, incredulous. “Sherlock, that _hurt_. That wasn’t a game, that hurt me.” She sighed. “Look, just—just pass me the plasters, and we’ll forget about it, okay?”

Sherlock nodded, solemn. He had messed up, he got that much. He just didn’t know how. She had said _yes_. She said it was okay. He handed her two of the little wax-wrapped bandages, carefully pulling his hand away from his eye. No blood, maybe a bruise later.

Chrissy took the plasters and knelt to apply them. Sherlock bit his lip.

“What?” she asked. Her voice sounded shaken, but the mischief was returning to it, little by little. She favored him with a small smile. “What’s up, Holmes?”

He bit his lip. He shouldn’t ask—he knew, he _knew_. But oh, he was selfish even then, and he just wanted to— “Could I just finish?” he blurted out.

“Finish?” There was confusion on her face first, and then he saw the moment that she realized what he meant. “You mean—” She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t need to. Her face contorted in anger, and she threw the bandages at him as she jumped up and backed away. “I can’t believe you,” she said. “You’re a— you’re a _freak_ ,” she spat.

“Chrissy,” he started. He scrambled up to follow her, to apologize, to say forget it, they could play pirates. They could play discoverers. They could play cop and robber even though he hated that one, because she liked it. He touched her shoulder, and she flinched back. She backed up, and she kept going until her back collided with a tree.

“Stay away from me,” she said. Then she turned around and ran, and Sherlock could have sworn he saw tears in her eyes when she did.

* * *

Chrissy told her parents. She told them, and they told his parents. Sherlock heard it because it wasn’t a phone call. Chrissy’s dad came over to their house looking murderously angry, and he started toward Sherlock as soon as he saw him (“C’mere, you little shit”), getting as far as fisting his hands in the front of Sherlock’s shirt as Sherlock went stock still, like a rabbit in a predator’s maw. His dad was there in an instant, grabbing Chrissy’s dad’s wrist in an iron grip and peeling him away from Sherlock.

They went into his father’s study, and Sherlock ran to his room. They were in there for a long time. There was yelling, a lot of yelling. Sherlock heard the door slam and saw Chrissy’s dad stalk across their lawn, back to his truck. He looked up toward Sherlock’s room, and Sherlock ducked out of sight. The truck drove away, and he never saw Chrissy or her dad again.

His mother cried, and his father looked grim. He put his hand on Sherlock’s thin shoulder, and it felt heavy as anything. “You know you have to stay away from her, don’t you?” His father asked.

Sherlock nodded. He didn’t know _why_ , but he knew Chrissy was scared of him, and her father was angry, and Mummy was crying.

Not long after that, Sherlock met his first therapist. The man was mild-mannered and wore spectacles. He spoke in a slow and gentle way and introduced himself as Bill. _Bill_  looked nervous after reading Sherlock’s file. He met with Sherlock’s parents, and they spoke in hushed tones. Sherlock pressed his ear to the door of the therapist’s office to hear, but he could only pick out words like _troubled_  and _medication_.

Sherlock learned the word for what he was, which was sociopath. They gave him pills that made his thoughts slow and his head feel stuffed with cotton. Every day felt like swimming in syrup. The pills were intolerable, Sherlock decided, and so he stopped taking them. He pocketed them in his cheek and lifted his tongue to show Mummy when asked. He spit them into the toilet and flushed them when no one was looking. He got better at lying, and he learned the therapists would leave him alone if he said the right things. It was win-win, as far as he was concerned. They could smile to his parents and feel good about fixing him. He could be left alone.

Sherlock stopped trying to make friends, stopped talking to other people at all. He became excellent at pretending to be—if not normal, then nonthreatening. It was how he’d lived for the past 25 years, and it had never failed him yet.

Until he met John.

* * *

Sherlock looked at John, and he thought of Chrissy. Chrissy calling him a freak, looking at him with horror. Chrissy with her red-streaked leg running through the forest, away from a monster.

Away from him.

Chrissy, and the reason John could never, ever know what he really was.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let’s try posting every Monday and Thursday because I’m a nutjob who loves terrible, tight deadlines. If it gets to be too rough, I’ll let you know and scale it back to Mondays only.

The way John looked at him was so noisy. Sherlock couldn’t think of any other way to put it. John looked at him all the time, when he thought Sherlock wasn’t looking—while he played the violin, fingers flying over the delicate fingerboard, callused fingertips pressing down on the sharp metal strings like a dance. It was distracting, and it made him hit sour notes, the discordant sound lingering in the air like the scent of blood at a crime scene.

He watched while Sherlock prepared microscope slides for viewing. When Sherlock was stretched out on the couch, he saw John’s quick, appraising glance taking in the long, lean lines of his body. He closed his eyes and steepled his hands under his chin, trying to find a bit of quiet in his mind palace. It didn’t work. He could  _ feel _ John looking. It was like an itch.

Sherlock opened his eyes and caught him out. Their eyes locked across the tight space of their sitting room.

To his surprise, John didn’t hurry to turn away like a child caught doing something naughty. Instead, he blinked slowly, like a cat, and smiled before turning back to his laptop. He started humming.

* * *

“You watch me,” Sherlock said one day. He expected John to protest. John was rather famously  _ not gay, _ as he never wasted an opportunity to inform anyone who thought they might be together, so surely in this scenario, John would assert his heterosexuality once more.

He didn’t.

John frowned, not the face he made when he was displeased, but the one that meant he was considering: tiny furrow between his eyebrows, lips slightly pursed. “I guess I do.”

“Hm,” Sherlock said.

* * *

_ “Why _ do you watch me?”

It was becoming intolerable. John was  _ looking _ at him all the time. It was more than just distracting; it was slowly eating away at his sanity.

John blinked. “Morning to you too.” He was still muzzy from sleep, looking bleary-eyed with his hair sticking up where it had been pressed into the pillow. Sherlock’s fingers itched to smooth it down, to sink into it, to see if it was as soft as it looked. He clenched them instead. He’d have sat on his hands if he thought he could get away with it without arousing suspicion.

John wandered into the kitchen, and Sherlock followed him. John was rooting around in the cabinet looking like a confused, slightly dull bear searching for honey.  _ Why _ did this incredibly ordinary man drive him to distraction?

“Well?” Sherlock demanded.

John grabbed four biscuits from a package and put two apiece on two plates and flipped on the tea kettle before handing one of the plates to Sherlock. He scrubbed a hand over his face. It mussed his hair more, and Sherlock’s hand twitched. “Well, what? Why do I look at you?” John huffed a laugh, barely more than an exhalation of breath. “Dunno, I suppose I just like it.”

Sherlock huffed, impatient. “That’s not an answer. Why do you like it?”

John studied him, eyes becoming more focused and lucid as he did. John pressed forward and crowded Sherlock against the counter, so close they were almost touching. His thigh was between Sherlock’s legs, and Sherlock could swear he could feel the heat of John’s body through their clothes. “I don’t know,” John said, leaning in. Sherlock’s breath hitched. He could smell John’s aftershave and feel the breath tickling his ear as the doctor spoke into it. “Why do you like it?”

And then John backed off, poured himself a cup of tea, and wandered into the dining room like nothing happened.

Sherlock stood in the kitchen staring at the back of John’s head like it would give him answers. It wouldn’t, of course, but even still, he stayed until his breathing returned to normal. Until his heart slowed and the heat kindling in his belly cooled.

* * *

They were playing a game. It was like a dance. John knew, and Sherlock knew, but neither of them was doing anything about it.

It was maddening.

It was delicious.

And then John started  _ teasing _ him. It started slowly, little innocent gestures at first, there and gone, so that Sherlock could have thought he’d imagined him. Fingers brushing against his as John reached for a pen he was holding. A hand on the back of his neck as John leaned over him to grab his mobile. Every little touch made Sherlock feel as though he was on fire, and by the third week, he was constantly on edge.

Sherlock had had sex before. He was no blushing virgin, there had been men and women aplenty. But this, this was something different. He  _ wanted _ John, wanted him with every fiber of his being. Wanted him with an intensity that scared him because it was a desire to possess, to consume, to break and remake him, to own him utterly.

And John had no idea.  _ No _ idea who— _ what _ —he was playing with. He brushed by Sherlock in the hallway, squeezing by him so he skimmed Sherlock’s front as he walked by, despite the fact that the hallway was more than large enough to accommodate both of them.

And that was it. Sherlock snapped. He had been teased enough. He slammed John against the wall, so hard that he could hear the hollow crack as John’s head hit the wallpaper. He kept John pinned with an arm over his windpipe. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, and his voice came out low and dangerous.

“Nothing,” John said innocently, and Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. He pressed down with his forearm to hear John wheeze.

“Is that so?” He ground his thigh up between John’s legs, digging it into the bulge he found there. “It didn’t feel like nothing.” John gasped, and Sherlock tightened his grip. “It felt like you were teasing me.”

He hitched his thigh up higher, and John groaned. He was riding Sherlock’s leg now, rutting against it, just short, shallow little motions. He was fighting for breath, and Sherlock loved every second of it. He peered into John’s face, watching the complicated play of emotions there. Lust, anger, and maybe just the slightest edge of fear.

Oh, and that made him shiver. The fear there, he wanted more of it. Sherlock reached down to unfasten John’s trousers with his free hand, deftly working them open. John couldn’t breathe, he knew. The amount of pressure he was applying, the placement and the angle… He waited just a little longer, as long as he thought he could possibly get away with before letting John go.

As soon as he took his arm away, John was gasping for breath, drawing in great, shuddering lungfuls; but Sherlock didn’t give him more than a moment to breathe. He had already freed John’s cock from his pants, and now he started pumping him in long, sure strokes.

“Oh god, oh god,” John cried, breathy and hoarse, until Sherlock sealed their lips together. He licked his way into John’s mouth, running his tongue over teeth, plumbing his mouth as he jacked him. John tried to pull away, to come up for air, but Sherlock caught the back of his head and pinned him in place.

“Mmph.” Noises were escaping the microcosm of their mouths now, bitten-off groans. Sherlock could feel the vibrations in his teeth as he kissed John Watson through his orgasm. When he came, he went totally still. His face went deliciously slack, prick pulsing and coating Sherlock’s hand in warm slick. Sherlock wiped his hand on John’s shirt and let him go at last, releasing his hair with a last playful tug.

John was breathing hard, panting with his trousers around his knees. He leaned against the wall and looked at Sherlock as though the detective was something he’d never seen before. His mouth hung open. He looked awed.

And a little wary.

Sherlock just watched him, kiss-bitten lips quirked up in a half smile as John pulled up his trousers, tucked himself away, and continued down the hallway. To shower, maybe. To get away from Sherlock, maybe.

Sherlock had never been very good at motivations.

He didn’t see John for the rest of the evening, but then, he didn’t expect to. He took care of his own erection in his room, quickly, efficiently. He couldn’t help but picture John’s face when he did, John’s eyes confused and his lips gasping for air. Sherlock came with the heel of his palm pressed to his mouth, muffling the sound.

And then he cleaned up, put the incident out of his mind and went back to the dining room. There was an experiment he’d wanted to do on a batch of eyes he’d gotten from Molly, and they were likely to go off soon.

_ John might leave. _

No, that didn’t bear thinking about. He sliced into the cornea with a scalpel, neatly peeling it open and cutting it into slices. He wanted to check the retinal blood vessels, to see if there was evidence of increased stress in the case of violent death. He made quick work of the first eye, then paused as he came to the second.

It was a veritable grab bag of eyes—different colors, different cadavers, multiple causes of death—but this one reminded him of John: similar color, the same blue shot through with green.

_ John might leave. You shouldn’t have done that. _

It didn’t bear thinking about. Sherlock prepared another slide. Evidence of macular edema. He scribbled notes, injected the slide with dye, slid it back under the clip. Another one, and then another. He was so engrossed in his work that he didn’t notice that John had come back downstairs. He didn’t notice until he felt a gentle pressure on his shoulder. Another man might have been startled.

“Hm, what?” Sherlock asked.

John’s eyebrows were creased—not anger, and not the bright, brilliant glow of fear from earlier—garden variety exasperation, then. Which meant John had been talking for quite some time, and Sherlock had missed it.

John rolled his eyes gently. “I said, we’re going to talk about this. Sit.”

Sherlock hesitated. He really didn’t  _ want _ to talk about it.

_ “Sit,” _ John said, in the tone of voice that carried army-issue boots, chains of command, and no room for argument. Oh, Sherlock loved that voice. He sat.

John considered the tray of eyes sitting at his usual place at the table. He picked it up and frowned. “They’re looking at me,” he muttered, then set it aside. He pulled his own chair out and sat facing Sherlock. “Okay,” he said. “What was that, in the hallway earlier?”

This would be a good time to sham being normal, if any time was. “A mistake,” Sherlock said, putting on being sheepish and contrite. He stretched his arm up and ruffled through the curls on the back of his head—people did that when they felt uncomfortable. (He  _ did _ feel uncomfortable.) “I’m sorry,” he said, and held John’s gaze with what he hoped was a look full of sincerity.

John snorted. “Okay, don’t do that. I’ve seen you put that on for too many witnesses for it to work on me.”

“Fine.” Sherlock pouted. He sat up and looked at John, no shamming. Just Sherlock. Calculating, sociopath Sherlock.

“And it  _ is _ fine,” John insisted, and now it was Sherlock’s turn to snort, incredulous. “No, really. I liked it, or couldn’t you tell?” A smirk crossed Sherlock’s face at that. “But you can’t just do things like that without asking, without talking about it first. There are—”

“Safewords?” Sherlock asked, eyebrow raised.

“Well… yes. We could talk about that.” John’s cheeks colored unexpectedly and, oh, charmingly.

So John had played at that with his girlfriends. Of course he had. Army man, doctor, likely attracted women who liked men in uniform, men with power. Sherlock could have rolled his eyes at how cliched it all was.

“But first I think we should talk about why you suddenly leapt on me in the hallway,” John finished firmly. “I don’t  _ mind _ , but I do want to know what’s going on.”

“You were—” Sherlock started lamely.

“Flirting?” John interjected with a raised eyebrow. “Yeah, that’s generally what people do when they find someone attractive.”

“You find me attractive?”

John rolled his eyes. “Stop fishing for compliments.”

Sherlock fidgeted. Cleared his throat. Became a coward and turned back to his ocular samples, pressing his eyes to the microscope’s viewfinder once more. “You’re interrupting very important research, John.”

He wasn’t looking at the slide; he was watching John from the corner of his eye. John, who frowned and heaved himself up with a sigh. John who shook his head. “Yeah, alright. I’m going to the pub.”

That tight coil of fear seized Sherlock again, along with the intrusive thoughts, the ones that said  _ John might leave _ and  _ You shouldn’t have done that. _

Sherlock hesitated. His heart was beating too fast. He pulled back so abruptly it made John stop, made him look over from where he was trying to find his keys (wrong jacket; you left them in the green one) “I find you more tolerable than most.”

Sherlock winced.  _ No, do better. John might  _ leave.

He crossed the room and kissed John, slow and sweet and tender. He pulled back and cleared his throat.

“I find you… essential to my work. To me.”

A slow, crooked smile spread over John’s face. He put down his keys (green jacket). “Yeah, that’ll do.”


	3. Chapter 3

They didn’t talk about it again, and Sherlock was privately glad of it. Whatever he felt for John, he didn’t want to put it to something as banal as words. They were what they were. It went without saying.

They were still Sherlock and John. John still sighed about Sherlock not doing the washing up and leaving tissue samples in the refrigerator, and Sherlock still did it anyway. They went on cases and had close calls and occasionally fought.

They made love often. They were comrades in arms; they shed blood together, solved cases together. John liked an edge of pain with his pleasure, and Sherlock was only too willing to provide. He was polite in their lovemaking. He took care of John, made sure he was satisfied; held himself back, always (for John, anything for John).

And if it wasn’t enough, well, it was very, very close. If Sherlock never got off himself (and if John frowned about it, worried, and tried all the more), well, some things couldn’t be helped. It was more than Sherlock had ever thought to have, and he wouldn’t presume to ask for more.

It was enough that someone as _good_ and brave as John loved him—it would have to be enough. He would make it enough.

John Watson was the third thing he had ever really loved, and the first two weren’t sentient. He caught himself wondering how John’s teeth would look in the box with his and Redbeard’s. That kind of thought was Not Good, and that way lay madness, but sometimes he just wanted to crawl into John’s skin and take him apart.

Things were very, very good.

Until

Until

Until Moriarty _stole_ from him, took what was rightfully his. He _touched_ John. He took him from Sherlock, trussed him up in Semtex and wires. He could have _killed_ John.

Sherlock saw John, saw Moriarty, saw red.

He wanted to rend Moriarty limb from limb, paint the walls with his blood. He could make Moriarty die screaming, and he could do it slowly.

He took _John._

Sherlock tried not to admit what was really behind his rage. He tried not to examine it too closely. Oh, he was angry that Moriarty had taken John. He could kill him for that alone, would do so if given half the chance.

But underneath and deep down, he was jealous.

He was jealous that Moriarty could have what he couldn’t: John grim-faced and tight-lipped, staring down the barrel of his own mortality. John scared for his life, collapsing on unsteady legs. John willing to _die_ for Sherlock—Moriarty had done that. He’d had that.

There were no explosions. Moriarty left, the snipers left, and they were alone in a dimly lit public pool, the chlorinated water casting ghostly patterns over their faces.

_“I love you,”_ Sherlock told John, and it was the first time. He was touching his face, touching his shoulders—his abdomen, his face again. Looking for injuries, checking to be sure that Moriarty hadn’t gotten to have that too.

“I’m fine,” John said. He kept repeating it. “I’m fine. Sherlock. Sherlock, it’s okay. I’m okay, really.”

Sherlock realized he was frantic. He was beside himself; he was not in control, and that was very, very Not Good. He had to have his hands on John, and _now_. He needed to be in John, for John to be in him. There was that desire again to swallow him whole, to consume him, to keep him caged where no one else would so much as look at him.

He yanked John’s shirt free from his trousers and slid his hands inside, exploring the soft curve of belly layered under the band of muscle beneath, smoothing his hands along John’s flank, his back. He attacked John’s mouth, capturing his lips in a needy kiss full of tongue and teeth.

John allowed it, kissing him back for a moment, before pulling back and gently capturing Sherlock’s hands in his. “Hey, hey, it’s alright,” John soothed. Despite their height difference, he held Sherlock. He cradled his head against his chest, and crushed the curls there as he smoothed his hand over Sherlock’s hair. Sherlock listened to the sound of John’s heartbeat. It was steady and slow. The sound soothed him, and Sherlock found his own heart falling in step.

John kept hold of Sherlock, stroking him as they stood clinging to one another. He only let go when Sherlock was calm once more.

“Okay?” John asked, and Sherlock nodded, terse. John insisted on calling Lestrade (“They’re the _police_ , Sherlock. That’s who you call when someone kidnaps you, straps a bomb on you, and points sniper rifles at your best friend.”)

Sherlock groused that the Met would never catch him anyway—no, Moriarty’s too smart for that—but in the end, John insisted. It was late enough that John agreed it could wait until morning. They got home, and John, ever the Englishman, put the kettle on. To John’s mind, there was nothing a good, hot cup of strong tea couldn’t fix. To Sherlock’s mind, nothing could right the deep injustice of _John being taken_ , so tea was as good a solution as any other (which was to say, none at all).

Sherlock accepted his cup in numb hands, and although the heat from the boiling water bit at his fingers, he still felt cold, cold all over.

The tea scalded his throat, but he drank it down, and it did nothing to warm him. He was calmer now, not riding the edge of hysteria as he had been at the pool, but he was still unsettled. He was still thrumming with unspent energy and the need to have John, to _own_ him, to crawl up in his skin and live there. He realized he’d been looking at John, staring at him like a dog with a steak, when John suddenly cleared his throat.

“Well. That was enough excitement for one night, wasn’t it?”

Sherlock stared. John was joking, but it wasn’t funny. _Nothing_ was funny, and Sherlock gripped the teacup so hard it shook against its saucer. John frowned and took it from him, set it gently on the table. It was mostly gone anyway. It was cold.

John yawned and stretched (fake yawn, fake stretch—for Sherlock’s benefit). “Well,” he said, slapping his hand on his thighs. “I’m beat. Think I’ll turn in for the night.” He got up and Sherlock fought down a sudden rising surge of panic. Sherlock didn’t know if that was an invitation. They didn’t always sleep in the same bed—sometimes, but not always.

He was being ridiculous; it wasn’t as though Moriarty was going to jump through the window. John could go, of course he could go. He wasn’t Sherlock’s _pet,_ whatever Mycroft said. He could go if he wanted. (Sherlock couldn’t let him out of his sight; what if he disappeared?)

Could he follow? (John might disappear.) Was that fine?

Sherlock was spared from having to answer the rapid fire questions that were suddenly jamming up his brain (why?) because John got as far as the stairs and turned back to Sherlock. “Coming?”

John’s gambit was transparent, utterly transparent. He was worried about Sherlock, worried he was in shock (he might be in shock). But just as in a magic show, knowing how the trick was done didn’t necessarily diminish one’s enjoyment. Sherlock was grateful for it anyway.

He got up (cold, still so cold). He followed John up the stairs tight as a shadow. If John had suddenly stopped, Sherlock would have pitched forward into him, that’s how closely he was following. Close enough to touch.

They didn’t bother with evening routines, not tonight. Teeth would keep until morning, they always did. John stripped down to his t-shirt and boxers, and Sherlock deconstructed his suit, his armor. (Paltry armor, it couldn’t even save John). They got into bed, and John turned out the light. The room was dark and quiet and still. He could make out the curve of John’s nose, his brow, his cheek, through the scrap of phosphorescent light that filtered in through the tatty, threadbare curtains.

It would have been impossible to tell who moved first because they were on each other in the same instant, springing together like a rubberband loosed, mouths like magnets. They found each other in the dark unerringly. If John had been able to playact the part of the stoic soldier, the stiff upper lip, that was gone now, here. Sherlock could taste his desperation in the hot slide of tongue, the tension in the arm that bracketed his back, the cord of lean muscle taut with exertion.

It was desperation that he shared. _Folie à deux,_ a madness of two.

They were quieter than usual, and the only sounds were the wet, obscene noises of their mouths sliding together and the small moans they eked out of one another. Sherlock got his hands into John’s boxers as John shoved his down. They stopped to shed more clothing, to get down to skin (yesmorenow _skin_ ).

Sherlock raked his blunt nails over John’s back, digging his fingers into the muscles there (trapezius, scapula). He licked and nipped and bit (and bit and bit).

“Ow. _Ow,_ Sherlock, you’re hurting me.”

“I know.” Sherlock moaned into his skin. His kisses were starting to taste like copper. “Oh, I know. Can I? Please, John, let me.”

John went very still for a moment. His skin was wet, and Sherlock licked it and tasted blood. He crushed his hand in Sherlock’s hair. “Okay,” John said whisper-soft. “Yeah, okay.”

Sherlock shoved two fingers into his mouth, slicking them roughly. He latched onto John’s shoulder with his teeth at the same moment he breached John with his fingers. John cried out, jerking against the intrusion.

“Shh, shh,” Sherlock hushed. He soothed his shoulder with kisses as he curled his fingers within. He dragged them in and out and felt the drag of friction, the stick of too-dry skin. John moaned and spread his legs wider as Sherlock added another finger.

“Ow, ow, ow,” he was chanting. “It hurts, Sherlock.” But he kept his legs open and his hips tilted to meet every thrust, every jerk of Sherlock’s fingers.

“I know,” Sherlock gentled, kissing his mouth carefully. “But you’re so beautiful like this.”

He pulled his fingers out abruptly to another cry from John. He licked his palm and slicked his erection. He was so hard, harder than he could ever remember being. He wanted. Oh, he _wanted_ so very badly.

“Can I?” He breathed, hovering with the tip of his cock at John’s entrance. He wanted it so badly he was quivering.

It was so dark; he could barely see John, but he could hear the shaky exhalation. He could feel the gentle touch of a callused palm sliding up to feel his face in the dark, to cup his cheek and rub a thumb across his lip. Sherlock nuzzled into it.

“Okay,” John said again.

Sherlock pushed forward, quick and hard, seating himself inside John with one smooth motion.

_“Fuck,”_ John hissed. “Wait, wait, don’t move. Oh god, fuck.”

He reached down and grabbed John’s prick and started pumping it slowly, adding pleasure to take the edge off the pain. He leaned forward and nuzzled into John’s neck, lapped at the hard rhythm of the pulse there.

John pushed the breath out through his nose. “I’m okay,” he said. “You can— you can go, if you want.” His voice was tight, and Sherlock’s cock twitched.

He pulled out slowly and slid in again, relishing the drag of just this side of too much friction. He fucked John slow and deep, matching the strokes of his hand in time with his thrusts. He wanted this to be good for John, wanted it to feel good as much as he wanted it to hurt.

Tiny, broken cries were falling out of John’s mouth as he pressed into him, noises that got louder as he angled his hips down to hit just _there_. John was snug and hot around him, and he wanted to bury himself into him again and again, tunnel into his body and live there.

John came with a startled yell that seemed to rip its way from his throat, and Sherlock found his mouth in the dark. He loved that sound; he wanted to swallow it whole. His nose brushed against John’s cheek, and it was wet. A jolt of arousal hit Sherlock like a sucker punch to the gut, and his own orgasm ripped through him as he stuck his tongue out to taste it, licking blessed salt from John’s skin.


	4. Chapter 4

It was glorious, and wonderful, and perfect. If Sherlock could have preserved it, encased the moment in amber, he would have.

But arousal fled, and cold dread snaked up his spine in its wake. Left in the aftermath of what he’d done, Sherlock felt nothing but abject horror.

“John,” he choked out. He pulled out, gently, gently, and winced at the hitched gasp from John as he did.

He groped for John in the dark, to hold him, comfort him _(keep him from running,_ the insidious part of his mind helpfully supplied). He felt John, the solid, comforting bulk of him. Sherlock expected him to pull away; John would be well within his rights to do so, but the reality was worse. So much worse. John stayed still and frozen, so silent he might not be there at all.

_I’ve broken John,_ he panicked.

“John,” he gasped. “John, John, John, I’m so sorry.” He clung to him, pressing himself to the doctor’s side. “John, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

A hand came up to stroke the back of his head, just lightly. “You came,” John said quietly.

Sherlock frowned in the dark. “What does that matter? It doesn’t matter. John, I’m sorry. Please don’t hate me. I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again.”

He was being hysterical again. He was acting like a child, but despite all odds, all his careful planning, _years_ of meticulous adhesion to his own rules, he had fucked it all up.

John shifted on his side to prop himself up on an elbow and face Sherlock. Even in the low light, he could see John wince, and a stab of guilt ricocheted through him. “You came. You’ve never been able to—” His brow furrowed. “You like hurting me, is that it?”

So in the end, it was his transport that betrayed him, that gave away just how Not Good he was. “It doesn’t matter,” Sherlock whispered.

John blew out a shaky breath. “Let’s just… let’s just go to sleep, yeah?”

He opened his arms, an invitation to Sherlock, who hesitated. He didn’t deserve this, didn’t deserve John.

Sherlock nestled his head against John’s chest and laid awake for a long, long time, long after John’s breath had evened out into the quiet, even depth of sleep. It was amazing he was still allowed this. He shouldn’t be. He was a monster. The monster that took _John_ from the clutches of Moriarty, then brought him home into the lion’s den and hurt him. A sick knot of shame lodged itself in his belly.

The worst of it was that he had _loved_ it. He’d loved every minute of it.

Sherlock didn’t think he’d sleep at all that night, but eventually oblivion came for him, and he let it pull him under. He dreamed of dark and terrible things. He dreamed of toothless Redbeard and Chrissy bleeding out in ribbons of red.

* * *

Sherlock slept, but not long or well. He was awake just as the first rosy blush of dawn began to paint the horizon, and he carefully extricated himself from the tangle of blankets and limbs on the bed. He stood and winced when he caught sight of John. In the light of day, the doctor looked as though he’d been savaged by an animal. There were bruises littering his arms and throat, dark purple blooms mottled with blue and tinged with yellow. He was covered in bite marks, and some of them had bled. There were smudges of red across his skin.

Sherlock’s mouth fell open. He had done that. He had liked it.

He crept out of the room and came back with a glass of water and two paracetamol. He placed them carefully on the nightstand on John’s side of the bed and watched John’s face. His brow was furrowed and he looked stern even in sleep. Sherlock left and quietly closed the door behind him. His fingers itched to play the violin, but for once, he was cognizant of not wanting to disturb John. Because he was certain that however kind John had been to him last night, he would wake up, and then he would leave.

(Anyone sane would leave.)

And Sherlock was still selfish enough to not want to speed that process along. He’d keep John here, asleep in bed, for as long as he could have him.

A case. He needed a case. Sherlock pulled out his mobile and let his fingers fly across it, tapping out a message to Lestrade. Lestrade, who, annoyingly, had other things to attend to at 6 in the morning. Why were the police only there when you didn’t want them?

Sherlock paced. He checked his email. He put on a pot of coffee and paced some more, glancing toward the hallway every five minutes listening for evidence of John.

Which was how, when John finally woke, Sherlock made sure he was looking out the window and playing the violin. He was a coward. He didn’t want to see the way John would look at him after he’d seen the evidence. The notes fell from his bow jagged and discordant. They howled and stuttered in a mockery of beauty.

“Morning,” John said, voice rough with sleep. “Thanks for letting me sleep.”

He wasn’t expecting John to _thank_ him. Sherlock opened his eyes and turned around, muting the ring of the final note as he lowered the violin. John was gripping a cup of coffee he’d fetched from the kitchen, hands curled loosely around it. His hair was still sticking up at odd angles from the bed. He had an odd look in his eye and the barest ghost of a smile at the edges of his lips.

“Sherlock—” he started.

And Sherlock was never more grateful for Lestrade than he was in that moment, for he was saved from whatever came next by a knock at the door.

“Ah! That’ll be Lestrade,” Sherlock said, too chipper. He set his instrument back in its case and went to answer the door.

“Greg,” John said, surprised. “Morning.”

“’lo, John,” Lestrade said, nodding. “Sherlock. I got here as fast as I could, but you know how traffic gets. You said there’d been a kidnapping?”

John swallowed his mouthful of coffee before speaking. “Mine,” he supplied. Then as an afterthought, “Coffee’s in the kitchen.”

“Ta,” Lestrade said.

“Second cabinet from the left, top shelf,” Sherlock called before Lestrade could start rooting around in their cupboards looking for a mug. There was an experiment in one that he didn’t think the detective inspector would look upon favorably.

John gave Sherlock a look that said _we’re not done here_ , but he’d smoothed his face into an easy smile by the time Lestrade came back with a steaming mug in hand.

Sherlock saw the precise moment that Lestrade noticed the marks on John’s neck, and for once he had cause to be thankful for John’s terrible taste in clothes. His lumpy jumper covered at least the worst of the damage. It looked like they’d been a bit overenthusiastic, nothing more, and it wasn’t as though their relationship was a secret from their colleagues.

They sat in the living room, with Lestrade taking the chair usually reserved for clients. John winced as he took his seat. It was a there-and-gone grimace, but Sherlock saw Lestrade register it too (twitch of lip, averted eyes). If Sherlock had never had cause to be grateful for it before, he was glad now that Lestrade was a professional and above the japes Donovan or Anderson would have surely made. He merely flipped open his notepad and said, “Right. So, the kidnapping.”

They started from the beginning, which meant John started from the beginning. He detailed how he was taken (from the street, syringe in his neck, unseen assailants—two), what Moriarty had said to him (nothing useful), what he had done (things Sherlock would kill him for). He told it without emotion, without the slightest hint of fear: the soldier giving a report.

Sherlock realized that between rescuing John and subsequently ruining him, he hadn’t even asked. He hadn’t needed to ask—he could deduce and infer—but he found that hearing the details, the specifics of John’s kidnapping, made a hot lick of rage coat the inside of his mind. His hands twitched, and again he ached to get them around Moriarty’s throat.

John shot him another look, and Sherlock flexed his fingers and reached out to take his mug. He drew it to his lips for something to do with his hands.

Lestrade took Sherlock’s statement, that at least went quickly. There wasn’t much that Sherlock knew that John didn’t, although he was able to rattle off several deductions—public school educated, between 34 and 38, megalomaniac—none of them were particularly helpful, but then, he didn’t actually want the Met getting their hands on Moriarty.

Moriarty was his.

Lestrade, for his part, couldn’t seem to tell the difference between helpful deductions and unhelpful ones. He didn’t seem to notice that Sherlock wasn’t really trying. The detective just whistled when they were both done giving their accounts.

“You boys had quite an evening. You sure you don’t want to see a doctor?” Lestrade asked John, cheeky grin slicking across his face for the first time as he gestured to his neck.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, and to John’s credit he didn’t so much as blush. “I _am_ a doctor,” John reminded him. “But no, really, I’m fine. No harm done.”

Sherlock drummed his fingers impatiently on the armrest of his chair. Lestrade would leave, and he would be left here alone with John. That couldn’t be allowed to happen. “You have a case,” he prompted.

Lestrade looked taken aback. “How did you know?”

“Because there’s always a case,” Sherlock said. “Now let’s hear it.”

Lestrade hesitated for the first time. “It doesn’t have to be now,” he said. “The Met could use your help, but it’ll keep for the day. We’re not totally useless, you know.”

Sherlock gave him a skeptical look that said _yes, you are_.

“Oy!” Lestrade protested.

“Can we come round later?” John asked, disappointingly breaking up a round of bickering that was worth at _least_ five minutes of distraction (five minutes that he didn’t have to look at John). “I’ve got to be at the clinic in an hour.”

“Fine by me,” Lestrade said, rising with a groan (trouble at home, sleeping on the couch again). “I’ve got a mountain of paperwork to get through in the meantime.”

“Actually, I think I’d like to see the crime scene now, if it’s all the same to you,” Sherlock cut in, standing too quickly and smiling in that perfunctory way that really wasn’t a smile at all. “Best to see the evidence when it’s fresh after all.”

Lestrade looked momentarily surprised, and John’s eyes narrowed.

“Sure,” Lestrade said, recovering quickly (thinks on his feet, necessary trait in a police officer), looking from Sherlock to John and back again. “Fine by me.”

“Now, if you please.” Sherlock prompted, and Lestrade let himself be hurried. He drained the last of his coffee at a gulp before making to put it in the kitchen.

“Leave it,” Sherlock called behind him, already pulling his coat on and striding down the stairs.

Lestrade looked askance at John who just spread his hands in a _you know him_ gesture. “Nice seeing you, John,” he said cop said.

“Likewise,” said John.

* * *

Sherlock was running away. Again. He’d certainly been doing a lot of that lately, John reflected as he gathered the discarded coffee mugs and set them in the sink.

He checked his watch: 7:30. He had just enough time to get to the clinic before he missed his shift. He swooped round the bathroom one more time to fix his hair and examine the marks Sherlock had left on him. They looked alright in the mirror; the worst of it was safely hidden under his clothes. He’d washed the wounds out in the shower and dabbed Bactine on them this morning. He was lucky he was up to date on his tetanus jabs.

John shook his head, remembering with some fondness the gift he’d found this morning, two pills and a glass of water. An apology for the night before, no doubt.

The thing was, he wasn’t sure if he wanted Sherlock to apologize or not.

Oh, he could have done without the wicked ache between his legs this morning—he was actually pretty certain Sherlock had torn something—and he certainly could have done without the crescent-shaped bite wounds littering his chest and arms— but when he thought back on the night before, he was surprised to find there wasn’t a hint of regret in it.

Sherlock had been unmoored, unsettled. As much as he tried to cover it up, he hadn’t been _right_ since he’d arrived at the pool and saw John held hostage. And what they’d done in bed together, well. It’d seemed to be something Sherlock needed.

John remembered Sherlock begging, panting, grown wild and uninhibited with lust. He clenched his muscles at the sharp hit of arousal that came with the memory and instantly regretted it for the fresh jab of pain that came with it.

He realized with some trepidation that was the first time he’d ever really _seen_ Sherlock like that. Sherlock in bed was usually thorough, giving, _polite._ He was always restrained. John had worried that their love life wasn’t good for Sherlock; he’d never even seen the man have an orgasm, but Sherlock had assured him he didn’t need it— that it was just the way he was wired, and John had believed him.

John shook his head again. Had Sherlock known? Had he known all this time that was what he needed, and he’d simply been keeping it from John?

* * *

The patients in the clinic kept him busy all day, and John was glad for it. He didn’t know what to think, and he wasn’t looking forward to trying to chase Sherlock down for answers. That seemed to be the pattern of their relationship, such as it was. Sherlock kept things to himself, and John either lived with it or tried to dig it out. He frowned. Shite pattern, that.

By the time he left for the day, the bite on his shoulder was burning, irritated from being chafed all day, the paracetamol from earlier long since worn off.

He texted Sherlock to ask if he was still at the crime scene or if he wanted anything. No response.

He hadn’t really been expecting one, since Sherlock tended to neglect his phone at the best of times, but especially when he was on one of his “ignore John” jags. He got home to an empty house.

He opened his computer to update his blog—there was plenty to write about, with all the madness with Moriarty and the bombs and no time to rest—but he found himself staring at the empty screen. It all felt too fresh. Like something he didn’t want to share with the world, not just yet. Especially not when Moriarty was still out there, and they had no idea where.

He checked for new comments (none), and slammed his laptop screen shut with disgust. He’d just scrub the kitchen, then. There was still a head in the fridge.

Sherlock didn’t get back until late, and by the time he did, John was irritated. Really, truly irritated. It didn’t help that Sherlock took one look at John, averted his eyes, and started slinking down the hallway to his room.

John had had enough.

“Look, you’ve been ignoring me since last night, and you don’t get to do that.”

Sherlock looked guilty, like a deer caught in the headlights before he smoothed his face clean again. “That’s preposterous. I’m not ignoring you. We have a case.” He threw the file down in front of John. “Or don’t you remember?”

John rolled his eyes. “Not actually an idiot, thanks.” He stabbed his index finger into Sherlock’s chest. “And you, I know you. I know what you look like on one of your sulks, and I know what you look like when you’re distracted by a case, and this is not it. So don’t do that. You’re going to tell me what’s up.”

“You don’t want that,” Sherlock said, looking away, seemingly finding something on the floor suddenly very, very interesting.

“Try me,” John challenged. He set his teeth and stared Sherlock down.

Sherlock was still studying the floor, and John had had enough. He grabbed Sherlock’s hand and lifted it to his injured shoulder, dropping it right over the deepest wound. He closed his hand around Sherlock’s, hard. Hard enough to feel the fine bones of his hand grinding together, and hard enough that the pressure against his own injury made him gasp, made him see stars.

Sherlock’s eyes snapped to his face, pupils gone wide and mouth gone slack. John could see the outline of a bulge in the detective’s trousers. “Oh,” Sherlock breathed. _“Oh.”_

John raised his eyebrow. “Like I said: try me.”

Sherlock took a deep breath. John had let go of his hand, but he kept it fixed to John’s shirt. He’d eased up the pressure, but it was still smarting something fierce where John had made him press.

“I… like hurting you,” Sherlock said hesitantly.

John nodded. “Figured that much.” He tried to keep his face as open and nonjudgmental as possible. This was clearly something that bothered Sherlock, enough that he tried to run from it—and John—whenever it came up. “Just me?” he asked. He wanted to gauge the extent of… this. Whatever _this_ was.

“No,” Sherlock admitted quietly. “There have been others.” He stared at his hands, then closed them and clenched them tight. “But I’ve never acted on it, not since I was a child.”

“Why not?” John asked. “Surely there would have been takers. BDSM isn’t uncommon, you know.”

Sherlock chuckled softly, shaking his head. “That’s not what I want. I can do it for the sake of others, play pretend, but it doesn’t do anything for me. There are no real stakes; it’s just a game—a game that can be called off whenever it suits. It’s _safe.”_

John’s mouth went dry considering the dark end of that thought. “So you want—”

“Real anguish. Real danger,” Sherlock confirmed. He looked at John then and smiled kindly. He lifted a hand to stroke John’s cheek. “Like I said, nothing you’d be interested in, love. And it’s fine, really. I’m sorry for last night, and I’m fine with what we have.”

John bit his lip. An idea—a very, very _bad_ idea was beginning to take shape. “What if I’m not?”

Sherlock’s eyebrows knit together. “Why wouldn’t you be? I’m telling you that you don’t have to deal with this. It’s not your concern.”

“Because I love you,” John said simply. “Because I want you to have what you need.”

“I don’t _need_ it, John—” Sherlock protested, but John held up a hand to cut him off. Amazingly, Sherlock actually fell silent.

“Let me finish, because if I don’t say this now, I don’t think I’m going to.” He squared his shoulders and looked Sherlock straight in the eye. “Here’s the thing: I love you, and I want you to have what you need,” he repeated. “But you’re right. I’m not like you. I don’t enjoy _…that_ the way you do. I don’t mind getting a little rough now and then, but last night—I’d be lying if I said I wanted more nights like that.” And here it came, the awful, terrible, bad idea: “But what if… what if I don’t have to remember it?”

Now Sherlock looked suspicious, eyes narrowing as his brilliant mind whipped through the possible implications of what John was saying. “What do you mean? Barring a traumatic brain injury there’s no reason you _wouldn’t_ remember, and I don’t want to cripple you.”

John took a deep breath. “God help me for suggesting this, but there’s a drug called Versed. It’s an amnesic benzodiazepine used in the chemical cocktail injected into a patient before an operation. It’s fast acting, and it inhibits the production of short term memory.” John swallowed, hard. “It wouldn’t dull the sensation at all.”

Sherlock sucked in a quick, sharp breath. He looked like a kid who’d just been told Father Christmas is real. There was something akin to reverence in his voice when he spoke. “You’d do that? You’d do that for me?”

“Not all the time, mind,” John warned. “The body can build up a tolerance to Versed within a few doses, and it’s highly addictive.” He felt vaguely nauseous at the idea of addiction. “We’re going to need to give my body a rest in between sessions.”

“Once a week?” Sherlock asked, hopeful. He was trying to keep a straight face, but the beginnings of a grin kept trying to tug the corners of his mouth up. The effect was altogether too endearing, and John’s heart clenched with a sudden swell of affection for this nutter _—his_ nutter.

“We’ll try it,” John said. “But if I want to stop—”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed immediately, words tumbling out of his mouth in a too-quick jumble. “If you want to stop, we’ll stop the arrangement at once. Of course. I don’t want to force you to do anything you don’t want, truly.”

John nodded. That was good. This was good. It would be fine.

So why did he feel like he’d suddenly gotten on a roller coaster with no seatbelt and no brakes?

* * *

Things didn’t happen quickly after that, not at all. For one thing, it was going to take some time to even _get_ Versed. It wasn’t something they kept stocked at the clinic, and John didn’t even know how to begin acquiring it from black market channels. Finding a gun was one thing, not particularly difficult for an ex-army bloke who knew a guy who knew a guy. Drugs, though, those were very much not his area.

Luckily (for a dubious value of _lucky),_ Sherlock took point on that aspect of it. “Leave it to me,” he’d said, and that had been that.

They didn’t talk about it again until Sherlock came home with a nondescript brown bag. He left it on the table, and without even opening it, John just knew what was inside. He knew it by the prickling of the fine vellus hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. When Sherlock left the room, John went over to peer inside. There was an orange bottle of pills and a small, innocuous bottle made of dark amber glass. Its lid was a cheery blue, and there was an array of hypodermic syringes nestled beside it in the bag.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d prefer pills or an injection so I got both,” Sherlock said quietly, suddenly standing right at John’s elbow. He was clearly in fine form, continuing his habit of showing up when John least expected him.

John swallowed against a throat that was suddenly dry. His heart was hammering. Apparently discussing being drugged and tortured in the abstract was a lot different from actually staring at a bag full of illegal drugs sitting on your kitchen table. He cleared his throat and tried to push the larger implications out of his mind. He approached the question the way he would any other medication decision for a patient. “Injection, I think. More effective for conscious sedation.”

Sherlock nodded, the way he’d nod if John had just shared some valuable bit of input at a crime scene.

John carefully rolled the top of the bag back down and left it alone to go watch telly. He needed a drink, or five. When he looked at the table again later, it was full of clutter as always, but the bag was gone. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t breathed just the smallest sigh of relief.


	5. Chapter 5

They talked about it haltingly, in a trickle and not a flood. A question asked here, an interjection there. Things mostly continued as usual, but the knowledge of the thing—what they were planning—took up space in the room. It was like the proverbial elephant lurking in corners and between them in the bed at night, obtrusive no matter how much they tried to shrink it and make it small. John thought about it constantly.

Which wasn’t to say they had nothing on.

For all his avoidance, Sherlock wasn’t lying. He’d ever lie about a case. His ride-along with Lestrade had been productive, and after their conversation in which John had assured Sherlock he was definitely  _ not _ leaving, the detective was positively glowing with excitement. There had been a burglary at a large bank, and nothing had been taken. Something had been  _ left, _ though: a jack of hearts with its eyes scratched out in red pen, sitting in a safe deposit box that the bank owner swore was guarded with top of the line security measures. John found the thing creepy. Sherlock thought it was wonderful.

He’d pronounced the case an 8, and they’d been spending most of their waking hours chasing down leads. Or, Sherlock chased down leads while John ran after him, cajoled him to eat  _ (and sleep, you maniac), _ and on one memorable occasion, kept him from getting his head bashed in by a big bloke with a lead pipe.

It took them a full two weeks to wrap it up, and in the end, it turned out the bank owner had done it, trying to drum up a bit of publicity to boost his numbers, courtesy of the infamous Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock had been in fine form, giving the man the tongue-lashing of a lifetime, and he was still shaking his head and muttering about it as they left the bank. “The nerve of some people, John.”

John was exhausted but still humming with adrenaline. It was the kind of night they’d usually spend fucking against the kitchen table, or the bathroom wall, or a floor—the kind of night when they didn’t typically make it to a bed, basically. He was looking forward to it in an idle kind of way, his body already reacting in a kind of Pavlovian response to the promise of an orgasm, food, and sleep, not necessarily in that order.

He was heading out to the curb where he saw a cab, when he turned around and saw that Sherlock wasn’t following. John frowned. “Sherlock?”

“We’re not going home just yet,” Sherlock said. He turned swiftly on his heel and started striding away down the sidewalk, leaving John to jog to catch up. Sherlock made several quick turns without warning.

“Where are we going?” John asked once, but Sherlock didn’t answer, just made another sharp turn down a nondescript block. His long legs and purposeful stride meant that John was slightly out of breath by the time they finally stopped.

John furrowed his brows when he caught sight of their final destination. “A… restaurant?” And not just any restaurant. A really, really nice restaurant if the posh clientele and ornate columns out front were any indication.

“Mm,” Sherlock hummed. “Aren’t you hungry? You’re always badgering me to eat after cases, aren’t you?” He sounded perfectly innocent, which should have been the first giveaway. But John’s belly growled, and he suddenly realized that he hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast that morning. It was—well, he didn’t actually know what time it was, but it was dark, and now that the adrenaline was receding a bit, he was famished.

Sherlock held the door for him, perfectly gallant, and entered after him. A maître d' in a suit that probably cost more than his rent asked, “Reservations?”

He looked down his nose at John, who was suddenly very aware of how underdressed he was for a place like this. “Um, no. But you do you have any room for walk-ins?” John started to ask, when Sherlock cut in. “Holmes, party of two.”

His voice was plummy and commanding, and the maître d' stood a little straighter. “Ah, right on time. Very good, sir,” he said, as he ushered them to a table in the back.

It was a good table. The restaurant was crowded, but their table was out of the way, tucked away in an alcove that afforded some privacy. The white tablecloth was starched and pressed, and there was a long-stemmed red rose in the center of the table. The restaurant was lit by strings of white lights that cast a soft glow over everything, and in a corner, a string quartet was playing something beautiful and lilting. The effect of the whole thing was elegant without being schmaltzy.

It was, in a word, perfect.

“What’s the occasion?” John grinned as he sat down.

Sherlock shook out his napkin—cloth, of course it would be in a place like this—and set it in his lap. John took the moment to just admire him. He looked every bit like he belonged in a place like this, all chiseled angles in a sharp suit. He didn’t even look like he’d broken a sweat, although John knew he’d been chasing a suspect down an alley just this morning. John, on the other hand, was sure that he himself looked very much the worse for the wear.

“I thought it would be nice,” Sherlock said. “Do I need a reason?”

John scanned the menu and whistled. It was the kind of place that didn’t even  _ have _ prices. “Nope, not as long as you’re treating.”

Sherlock chuckled, and the throaty, low sound warmed John. “Get whatever you’d like.”

In the end, John got a steak, and Sherlock ordered some kind of shellfish pasta. He even ate most of it, John noticed with a smile. It was easiest to get Sherlock to eat after a case, but even then, it was sometimes touch and go.

One bite of his own food and he could see why, though. It was delicious. The steak was juicy and tender, the sort of meat that fell apart in your mouth, and John decided he absolutely did not want to know how much the thing cost. Even the vegetables were delicious.

Their meal was mostly silent, but it was a companionable silence, the kind born of hunger and long familiarity. John looked up a few times to see Sherlock watching him with a happy, open smile on his face, and each time he returned it with a quizzical smile of his own. By the time their plates were cleared away, John was pleasantly stuffed, and he huffed a sigh of contentment.

“I hope you saved room for an nightcap,” Sherlock said. “This restaurant has a signature cocktail that’s to die for.”

Now John was starting to get suspicious. “Okay, really, Sherlock, what’s the occasion? I don’t believe you made a reservation here just to celebrate uncovering bank fraud. Speaking of— when did you have time to make that reservation anyway? You’d only just solved the case before we left.”

Sherlock flapped his hand. “I solved the case two weeks ago which, incidentally, is when I made the reservation.”

John boggled. “Wait, what? Then what on earth was all that running around London for? We were on the case for  _ weeks.” _

“John.” Sherlock fixed him with a reproving look and laughed. “Come now, surely that was obvious even to you. It was clearly an inside job; how could it have been anything else? The tan line on the bank manager’s left ring finger, his suit—clearly expensive but out of season and in a poor state of repair—a divorce, then. His ex-wife took everything, and his branch’s account numbers are dropping like flies. Most of those high tech safe deposit boxes were empty. He needed a bit of publicity to generate clients.”

John frowned. “Okay, but how does that drum up business? Bank gets broken into, proving their ultra-secure lock boxes aren’t that safe after all. Who’d want to store their valuables there?” John dimly realized he should have been irritated that he’d just been given the runaround for  _ two weeks _ for nothing, but as ever, he was too caught up in how  _ brilliant _ this man was.

Sherlock waved it off. He was staring at something past John’s shoulder, no longer even looking at him. “All publicity is good publicity, John. To some, it’s better to live in notoriety than to languish in obscurity. Ah!” He got up suddenly, so that it took John a moment to realize that he had so abruptly changed tack. “Come, John.”

John’s brow furrowed. “Where?” They hadn’t even paid yet. He didn’t  _ think _ Sherlock was the type to dine and dash, but he also wasn’t completely sure.

“Trust me,” Sherlock said, smiling in that way that he thought made him look more approachable (the smile that secretly gave John the creeps). “The game is on!”

And yet, for all that John really, truly felt this was against his better judgment, he got up and followed. It turned out they didn’t have far to go. Sherlock led John into the bathroom, and John frowned. “What are we doing, Sherlock?” he asked with a sinking feeling that said he might already know.

Sherlock turned and latched the door behind them. The bathroom was spacious and well-appointed. There were plus chairs in a sitting area before the bathroom proper, and the only thing missing was the bathroom attendant John always assumed came with places like this. They were totally alone.

“He’s on break,” Sherlock murmured, reaching into his coat pockets. “We have about, oh, ten minutes.”

“For what?” John asked.

He needn’t have bothered. Sherlock laid the supplies out on the marble countertop; apparently he’d had them stowed in his coat the whole time, the vial of midazolam, a hypodermic needle, and alcohol swabs. John’s mouth went dry. “Oh.”

Sherlock caught and held his gaze, suddenly very serious. “Tell me if you don’t want to do this,” he said. “Tell me right now, and we’ll go back to the table, have a drink, and go home. I want you to know that this…” He gestured between them. “Whether you decide to do this or not, it has no bearing on what’s between us, or how I feel for you.’

John was touched. He swallowed. “That was quite possibly the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Then I’m doing a poor job,” Sherlock said, and his lips twitched upward just a little.

John smiled. “Well, maybe not so bad as all that.” Now it was his turn to clear his throat. Sherlock had said ten minutes. They had a little time. “Do you want this?” He asked, because he knew, but he had to hear it. If he was doing this  _ for _ Sherlock, he wanted to at least hear that it was making the man happy.

“Yes,” Sherlock breathed. “Very much.”

“Then I’ll do it. Where do you want me?”

“Here is fine,” Sherlock said, indicating the counter, and John perched on it. It was surprisingly dry, for a public bathroom. He pulled up his shirt and leaned back while Sherlock washed his hands.

“Why here?” John asked. “Why a restaurant? Surely this would’ve been easier at home.”

Sherlock huffed a small laugh. “I thought this would make it… special. Nice.” He frowned. “Not good?”

John barked a laugh as the impossible ridiculousness of the situation hit him full force. He laughed, and the laughter felt cleansing. It grounded him. They were still just Sherlock and John, doing yet another mad thing. At last he got hold of himself and looked around at the fancy bathroom, the marble and crystal everywhere. It really  _ was _ nice. This evening had been one of the best in recent memory.

He saw Sherlock’s face fall, uncertain, and he was gripped by a sudden rush of tenderness for this impossible, ridiculous man. “Every bit about this is mad and more than a bit not good,” John chuckled. He lifted a hand and traced it down the side of Sherlock’s face. He kissed him softly and pressed their foreheads together for just a moment. “But you’re my kind of mad, Sherlock Holmes.”

Sherlock smiled and brushed another kiss against John’s mouth before pulling back and ripping open the alcohol swab packet. He swiped it along John’s exposed belly, and John hissed at the cold sensation of it. Sherlock grabbed the brown vial of medication, uncapped the hypodermic needle and plunged it into the top, deftly drawing the clear, faintly yellow liquid into the syringe.

“You know what you’re doing?” John asked, trying to keep his voice light. He gripped the edge of the counter tight with his free hand.

“Of course,” Sherlock said. “I did my research. I’m giving you 2 mg of midazolam subcutaneously.”

John nodded. That would do it. “I’ll be aware but relaxed. You’ll have to wait about fifteen minutes for my ability to form memories to be completely disabled.”

Sherlock just nodded.

John was talking more to make himself feel better, at this point. If Sherlock said he’d done his research, then he had. John had no doubt he was telling Sherlock things he already knew— if his lover was more than a bit mad and careless with his own safety and well-being, he was never careless about John’s.

He held up the syringe and tapped the air bubbles from it, deft fingers flicking against the plastic with practiced ease. John tried not to think of where that practice had come from, all the other times Sherlock did exactly this, with a syringe prepared for himself instead of John.

He paused with the needle just above John’s skin. “Are you ready?” He asked. “We can still stop—”

John shook his head. “Do it.”

It was over in a second. A quick pinch, then the sensation of something cool and stinging flooding his skin. John sat still and played with Sherlock’s hair, taking the opportunity to scrunch his hands in those curls that he loved.

And then it was over. Sherlock was replacing the cap on the needle and stowing it, along with his other supplies, back in his pocket. He extended a hand to John and helped him down from the counter, even though they both knew it was unnecessary. John straightened his shirt and felt utterly normal, besides his heart pounding in his chest with sick anticipation.

Sherlock hesitated with his hand over the latch to the bathroom door, then turned to face John. “I realize this was an oversight, but we have a few minutes, so we should at least address it now. The other day, you mentioned a safeword—”

Ah. He had, hadn’t he? John had made a big fuss about  _ asking _ and  _ consent _ and  _ safewords, _ and then just a few days later, he was in a swanky restaurant loo offering to let his sociopath boyfriend shoot him up with memory-inhibiting drugs. Way to go, John Watson.

Sherlock was right, this was a  _ truly _ awful time to discuss this, but John was surprised to find he didn’t need to think it through. Suddenly, he knew exactly what he needed in a moment of perfect clarity. “I don’t want one,” he said.

Sherlock’s eyebrows shot up.

“Not much point when I won’t remember it anyway.”

“John, I would never—”

John cut him off. “I trust you, yeah? I trust that you won’t do anything to damage me. Just— I never want to find out about what you do while I’m… gone. Okay?” He took a deep breath. “So that’s my only rule. Don’t tell me, and don’t let me find out about it.”

Sherlock nodded solemnly. “You have my word.”


	6. Chapter 6

The bathroom attendant returned to his post just as they left, and Sherlock gave him a smile when they passed in the hallway. Perfect timing. He was fairly humming with electric excitement. He wanted to look at John, to see how he was faring, but he refrained. John was nervous, and the last thing Sherlock needed to do was remind him that this was anything but an ordinary night.

There’d be plenty of time to look later.

Sherlock steered them toward the bar. He saw John glance back toward the table, saw the hint of a question in his eyes. “Already taken care of,” he told John.

They sat at the end of the bar, not in the densest part of the crowd, but near enough. The private table earlier had served its purpose. Now he wanted to show John off. He wanted John to feel other people’s eyes on him as he slowly slipped away.

“Two Glenfiddich 15s,” Sherlock told the bartender when he came to take their order. “Neat.”

“Sherlock, I shouldn’t drink after—” John trailed off, glancing around them, checking for listening ears. He lowered his voice. “You know.”

“Just for show,” Sherlock lied. (7 minutes) He took a small sip of his own drink. “How are you feeling?”

John frowned, his eyebrows furrowing as though he were trying to figure out a particularly difficult problem. “Fine, I guess? A little fuzzy.”

Sherlock nodded. He decided to distract John, leaned in close and conspiratorial. “Did you see the bank manager’s face when I told him his wife left due to his impotence?”

John snorted. “How could I miss it? He turned so red, I thought he was going to have a stroke. How did you know, by the way?”

Sherlock shrugged and rattled off the string of deductions that had led him to that particular tidbit. (9 minutes)

He kept John busy, kept him happy and occupied right up until the 15 minute mark, and then it was time to play. Sherlock took the untouched glass of whiskey in front of John and poured half of it into his own glass. He held it up to the light, studying it with a critical eye before splashing a little more out, then he slid the glass in front of John.

“Drink,” he said. “Slowly.”

John looked like he might protest, and with good reason. Mixing a benzodiazepine with ethanol, it  _ was _ dangerous, which was why he’d done his research on this too. 20 milliliters wasn’t enough liquor to do John any serious harm, but it was enough to get him wrecked, which was Sherlock’s aim for tonight.

“I’ll take care of you,” Sherlock said softly.

John shrugged and did as he was told, taking a small sip from the glass. Sherlock watched his throat as it worked. Fascinating. He wondered if Versed made subjects more compliant as well. He filed that question away for another time—that could make for some interesting experiments. He wondered how far it would go, what else he could make John do.

John raised an eyebrow. “So that’s your grand, devious plan—getting me drunk?”

Sherlock grinned. “Problem?”

John shook his head, incredulous. “No. It’s just—” He trailed off, trying to find the words. “Not what I pictured, I suppose.”

“What did you picture?” Sherlock asked, propping his chin on his hand.

John frowned. “I don’t know. Whips and chains. A dungeon maybe. Is that silly?”

Sherlock licked his lips. He let the mental images that John was painting wash over him, John tied up with beautiful lines of red welts painted over his back and thighs. “Not at all,” he said, and he knew exactly how his voice sounded. Low and silken, seductive and dangerous. He let his eyes smolder into John’s before taking another small sip of his own drink. “But we have time. Finish your drink. We should be getting home.”

It was true, Sherlock had dozens of things he wanted to do with John, to do  _ to _ him. He had a hard time picking just one to start, but he’d decided he wanted this, John pliant and gone soft and sleepy with drink.

_ We have time _ —there was such hope for the future in that phrase, unearned hope, considering the fragility of this thing they were doing. Sherlock couldn’t shake the sense that he was playing fast and loose with the most precious thing he’d ever had. It was possible he’d break it like he’d broken so many other things over the years. They had time, unless John came to his senses and decided to call it all off. He had every right to, and some part of Sherlock was honestly shocked that he hadn’t yet.

But John (brave John,  _ brilliant _ John) just said, “Right,” all matter-of-fact and drained his glass.

“How are you feeling now?” Sherlock asked as John lightly smacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, chasing the taste of the scotch (and it  _ was _ good scotch).

“Fine,” John said, too-bright with a hint of slur in his voice, eyelids starting to droop.

Sherlock watched him closely. He’d carefully calculated the amount of alcohol a man of John’s size could have—mixing depressants was dangerous. Too much could depress John’s heart rate to fatal levels, could stymie his breathing. He’d calculated it, but he watched John to be sure. He took in his wide, blown pupils, the slowed rate of respiration—the exaggerated rise and fall of his chest that suggested breathing was beginning to become an exertion all its own.

Sherlock reached out and pressed two fingers lightly to the inside of John’s wrist in a gesture of practiced carelessness. Anyone looking at them would assume it was a glancing brush of hands, the kind of thing that lovers did every day. His pulse was strong and slow, keeping a largo beat.

Sherlock thought on that—ordinary lovers, the ones who did ordinary things like go to bars to drink together. The ones who returned home besotted and flushed, to fall on one another in a fit of inebriated giddiness. At the thought of what  _ ordinary people _ did, Sherlock’s breath caught in his throat in wonder at his good fortune. His John wasn’t ordinary; he was  _ amazing. _

Who else would let Sherlock do such things to them?

* * *

By the time they left the bar, John was struggling to keep his eyes open. “’m fine,” he slurred, but Sherlock walked closer, supporting him with a steadying hand on his arm anyway. They passed a couple that looked askance at them, and Sherlock shot them a sheepish grin. “He had a few too many,” he said with an exasperated shake of his head.

The woman giggled. “I know how that is,” she said, shooting a teasing look at her beau, who gave her a playful swat. They walked by and through the double doors he and John had just exited, off to start a night of their own.

“So what’re you going to do to me when we get home?” John asked, swaying slightly on his feet while Sherlock stepped out in the street to hail a cab. It was too earnest to sound like a joke.

“You’ll see,” Sherlock breathed hot in his ear, giving him a wicked grin.

John snorted, and then the cab was there. Sherlock was positively solicitous, opening the car door for John and helping him inside. It was ironic that he was treating John like he was fragile tonight of all nights, but this was all just so improbable— like a dream that would end if he blinked. John was  _ amazing, _ and Sherlock felt the overwhelming, cloying need to keep him safe from everything  _ (everything that isn’t me). _ John rested his forehead against the window as they drove through the London streets.

The night was early yet. On the streets, they passed young people just starting their night.

A group of enthusiastic uni students whooped and hollered as they tumbled out of a small brownstone flat. Sherlock could hear the sounds of their revelry even with the windows up. They were passing a crumpled brown paper sack between them and taking turns swigging from the bottle. The girls were grinning in spangled dresses, and the boys looked hungry.

Sherlock cut his eyes over toward John’s quiescent form and felt a slowly rising hunger of his own. He reached his hand out to where John’s hand was curled harmlessly in his lap. John’s fingers twitched and closed around his, and he offered Sherlock a small, sleepy smile. “This doesn’t feel so bad,” John said apropos of nothing. “Feels kind of…” He frowned, searching for the word. “Floaty.”

Sherlock chuckled. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

He watched John for the rest of the ride.

* * *

By the time they returned to Baker Street, John was dozing lightly. Sherlock roused him with a gentle touch on the shoulder, and John started awake. “Whassit?” he asked blearily.

“We’re here,” Sherlock said quietly. Once again, he helped John out of the cab.

As he paid the cabbie, it could have been any other night, a night when John had dragged Sherlock out for dinner after a particularly grueling case. It could have been any other night, if not for the slow, labored push of John’s chest as his hampered nervous system went about its business. If not for the bright shock of fear he could see overtaking John as he stood in the living room that was suddenly so quiet after the bustle of London.

Sherlock could hear the dull rush of blood in his own ears. John was more aware now, his earlier sleepiness chased away by adrenaline, body scenting danger on the wind. That wouldn’t last. Sherlock circled him like a predator.

“Sit,” he said, and it was not a request.

John gulped. He took a seat in his usual chair, and that suited Sherlock just fine.

Sherlock crouched before him, putting his hands on the armrest of either side of John and leaning in close—too close for comfort, he knew that much. He could see John’s pulse hammering in his throat—John’s heart was making quite the valiant effort. The light here was much better than it had been in the dimly lit restaurant, and it made John’s huge, dark pupils stand in stark contrast against the blue slivers of iris; even in the bright lamplight, they were blown wide. It probably hurt.

Here, there was nowhere for John to hide from him.

“How do you feel?” Sherlock asked again, inches from John’s face.

“Uh, fine, I guess.” He swallowed again, rubbed his hands on his pants. Wobbled a bit, just a little unsteady. “Bit nervous. Are we gonna get on with it, or are you going to stare into my eyes all night?”

Sherlock reached forward unhurried and unbothered and got his hand around John’s throat. He just rested it there, not squeezing. He liked feeling the steady drumbeat of John’s blood beneath his fingers, evidence of his life. “Are you afraid?” Sherlock asked, ignoring John’s question.

“No,” he lied. His eyelids threatened to slide shut, although he was fighting to keep them open.

“You should be.”

He squeezed John’s neck, just a little, just to feel the grind of the fine bones beneath his fingers. “Do you know it’s remarkably easy to kill a person by choking them? The right amount of pressure in the wrong place.” He squeezed a little harder, then let him go. “It’s easy to crush a windpipe. A child could do it.”

John licked his lips, rubbed his neck where Sherlock’s hand had been. “Done that before then, have you?” John asked, keeping his tone light. The slur was precious. His body’s adrenal glands were losing the battle against the intoxicants mingling in his bloodstream.

“On cadavers,” Sherlock said with a glint in his eye. It was a silent challenge.

“Ah, well, good.” John deadpanned.

“Back in a bit,” Sherlock said, kissing the top of John’s head. He went to the refrigerator and grabbed a second vial, prepared another syringe. He glanced over to the sitting room where John was slumped over in the chair. He settled in front of John, kneeling before him—John, who didn’t notice he was there until he’d swabbed his neck with another alcohol pad.

“Don’t move,” he chided, and he stuck John with the needle. John moaned as he depressed the plunger. It was  _ fascinating _ how pain and pleasure sounded so much alike.

“What’s that?” John asked, and Sherlock’s cock strained in his trousers at the naked alarm there. John stayed perfectly still until Sherlock pulled the needle from his neck (smart, John) then shrank back against the chair, indulging his natural instinct to flee insofar as he was able.

“Muscle relaxant,” Sherlock smiled, and it was his chilling smile, the one that made those with good sense stay away from him.

“What?” John’s eyes grew huge. “Sherlock, that could kill me.” He was currently losing the battle to keep his eyes open. “How much?” he slurred.

“Enough,” Sherlock said, and brushed his lips over John’s before setting the syringe aside. He’d get rid of it before John woke in the morning.

Sherlock’s eyes glittered as he raked them over John’s body, the heaving chest and heavy eyes. What a beautiful sight.

He licked his lips. “Stand up and take your clothes off.”

“Sh’lock, dunno if I can stand,” John protested.

“Try.”

He did, and that was glorious too. He rose on colt’s legs, shoving himself up off the chair with effort. He held onto it as he stood, toed off his shoes in a way that made him stumble. Ordinarily Sherlock would help him, catch him, but not tonight.

John’s hands stuttered over the buttons of his shirt, not nearly dexterous enough to slip them free of their loops. Sherlock took pity on him and assisted after a moment, helping him to shed his shirt and step out of his pants and trousers so that John stood there naked, shivering and half-asleep on his feet. He kept slumping to the side. He looked so vulnerable, and it made Sherlock want to do terrible things to him.

Sherlock thought about taking John upstairs. For some reason, the thought of defiling him in his own bed—the idea that he would sleep there on other nights, surrounded by the memories but none the wiser—made his cock strain in his pants. But while he’d love to watch John struggle his way up the stairs, he might fall, and that would leave bruises; and bruises were evidence.

He steered John into his room instead, and John collapsed face down on the bed at the gentlest push between his shoulder blades. He was so helpless like this. If Sherlock didn’t turn his head to the side, didn’t help him breathe, John would suffocate. He stared for a full minute, closing his eyes and visualizing the effects in John’s body—lungs straining for air against the thick bedspread, blood becoming increasingly less oxygenated, brain function slowing—before gently rolling John over onto his back. He propped John into a seated position against the pillows. His head lolled harmlessly against his chest. He was sleeping, or, if not sleeping, then unconscious.

Which wouldn’t do.

Sherlock reared back and slapped John hard across the cheek. He came to, blearily, blinking. “Nngh.” He was trying to say something, trying to form words through lips that were still faintly blue.

“I doubt you can speak,” Sherlock told him conversationally, “So I wouldn’t try too hard. Do stay awake, though. I can help you if you can’t, but I doubt you’ll like my methods.”

Sherlock rubbed his own crotch through the seam of his pants while he spoke, watching John’s eyelids flutter as he tried to obey. Watching John try so hard to follow his directions, even as he fought against the massive doses of powerful central nervous system depressants in his veins—it was intoxicating. Sherlock let his own eyes slipped closed and a small moan fell from his lips as he fondled himself.

He crawled across the bed to John and slotted their lips together, not kissing so much as just sharing breath. The faint puffs of air from John’s lips were an aphrodisiac, and Sherlock tentatively stuck his tongue out to taste them. He ran his tongue around the perimeter of John’s lips, and they were cold and soft beneath his mouth.

And then John did the thing that had Sherlock’s heart flipping in his chest. He started kissing back, or trying to. He wasn’t managing very well; his lips kept slipping against Sherlock’s, and his tongue was uncoordinated. He kept losing the thread of what he was doing, and it lit Sherlock’s blood on fire. Sherlock slipped a hand around the back of his head and tilted it to get a better angle. He kissed John with abandon, plundering his mouth with teeth and lips and tongue.

He made helpless little noises against Sherlock’s mouth, and Sherlock rode the high of it. He climbed onto John, fit himself into John’s lap so he could nuzzle into his face, his neck. He licked and nipped without purpose, just for the simple joy of touch. He brushed his skin against John’s skin until they were both pink and chafed, until John shied away from his touch. He touched him everywhere, elbow, arm, ears, thighs, perineum. All of it was as intoxicating as the rest. He pinched John in sensitive areas to see him jerk. He reached out and rolled a nipple between two fingers to hear John gasp, just a little stutter of indrawn breath.

It was sexual, and it wasn’t. He wasn’t chasing an orgasm tonight, and John likely wasn’t capable—but that was very much beside the point. He wanted this—all of this and exactly this, just as it was. John, laid out for him. Willing to let him do all manner of things to his transport just because Sherlock wanted it.

“You’re mine,” he whispered into John’s neck. “Mine and mine and mine.” He gripped John’s hair and tugged by the roots, prompting him to drag his eyes open once more. “I’m never letting you go,” he said, letting his eyes bore into John’s. “You’re mine. Say it.”

At first he thought John wouldn’t, that he probably couldn’t. But then, as if on delay, John’s lips moved. They were clumsy, opening and closing without sound as he tripped on his tongue. But then, there, sweet as music and light as breath, so soft Sherlock could have missed it in the silent room.

_ “Yours.” _


	7. Chapter 7

John woke up feeling disoriented and very, very hungover. He was in a bed with the covers pulled up to his chin. He sat up and took stock: Sherlock’s bed, and Sherlock himself was nowhere to be found. A thread of sweet music wound its way through his awareness—also Sherlock’s, so there was one mystery solved.

John rubbed his neck where there was a slight soreness. He found a glass of water and a couple of pills beside him, and he took them. The last thing he remembered was having dinner with Sherlock and—

Oh.

Right. Having dinner with Sherlock, then letting Sherlock dose him with Versed in the bathroom. As much as John truly didn’t want to know what happened next, he tried plumbing his mind for answers, trying to see what memories he could dig up. He drew a complete and utter blank. Nothing. There was literally nothing there, and John felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward.

He went to the bathroom to shower and wash up and felt—mostly normal. Utterly normal, as soon as the pills took away the lingering headache he’d woken up with. John was whistling and feeling positively chipper by the time he’d dressed and made it to the living room.

He would’ve thought Sherlock hadn’t even noticed his arrival, if not for the barely perceptible stutter in his playing. Sherlock was a master at dissembling, but John  _ knew _ him. Sherlock kept going until the end of the song—not a song John knew, but pretty nonetheless—and John smiled as he pulled the bow off and finished.

“That was nice,” he said, feeling strangely light.

“Thank you,” said Sherlock. He gestured toward the kitchen with his violin. “There’s coffee.”

“Right, thanks.” John nodded.

He drank his coffee, and he sat with the Sunday paper, and it was  _ nice. _ John was fairly humming with contentment by the time he glanced up and saw Sherlock… hovering. There was no other way to put it. Sherlock was hovering. He was looking at John uncertainly, like he wanted to say something. It gave John an unpleasant jolt of a reminder, but he was determined to enjoy the morning, everything else be damned.

“Yes?” John asked with dogged cheerfulness.

“How do you feel?” Sherlock asked hesitantly. It was so rare to hear the detective sounding uncertain that John might have enjoyed it, had he not been so determined to ignore the  _ reason _ Sherlock sounded that way.

“Fine, great.” John said, turning back to the paper, and there were doors closing in his voice. It was a voice that was resolutely chipper, that brooked no argument. It was a voice that said  _ leave it alone, Sherlock _ .

Sherlock did, and John once again counted himself lucky to be dating the most brilliant man in London.

* * *

The next time they did it was a week later. They did it in their own bedroom this time, which was more than fine by John. Sherlock asked him to lift his shirt, but he stripped it off instead, removing his sweater as well. The intimacy of the action felt right, and John shivered a bit as the air hit his skin. He felt more settled this time. The hair-standing-on-end fear of the last time was gone, and instead there was a warm flutter of anticipation in his belly, like the feeling at the top of a roller coaster. The room was warm, and the antiseptic was cold when Sherlock ran it over his skin.

Another pinprick pinch, and it was done. And now they waited. It was… awkward, surprisingly so. Awkward in a way it hadn’t been last time, when they were high on the adrenaline of a (sham) case well-solved. Sherlock took a seat next to him on the bed, and John cleared his throat. He fiddled with his own hands, not really knowing what to do with them.

“Do you, ah, have to set a timer?” John asked for something to say.

Sherlock shook his head. “I can keep track.”

He leaned in and kissed John, and the warm slide of his lips felt silken and decadent. They kissed hungrily, tongues exploring each other’s mouths. Sherlock pushed John back onto the mattress, bringing his hands up to rub them over John’s chest, feeling the muscles there as their mouths moved against one another.

Sherlock grabbed John’s hair and tugged, and a thrill of fear went through him. Unlike Sherlock, he wasn’t adept at keeping time in his head alone. At every movement from Sherlock, John wondered how much time had passed, if it had been fifteen minutes already, if now was the time that Sherlock’s playful nips and tugs would edge over the line into real pain.

The fear somehow flowed into desire, stoking John’s arousal into a knot of confusion. He grabbed Sherlock’s head with one hand fisted in the curls at the back of his head. He licked his way into the detective’s mouth and used his other hand to press down on Sherlock’s arse, grinding their hips together in a way that earned an approving groan from Sherlock.

They rutted against one another, and John began to feel good in a way that was distinctly chemical. Sherlock pinned his hands above his head and kissed his way up them, stopping to brush feather-light kisses against each of John’s fingers. It was a testament to the benzo in his bloodstream that John didn’t realize what was happening until he felt the strap tighten around his first hand. He raised an eyebrow at Sherlock, who grinned. The strap was black with a velcro closure that wrapped all the way around his wrist, holding it snug.

John tested it, pulling experimentally. Whatever else it was, it was sturdy. He wouldn’t be getting out of it unless Sherlock let him go. The thought sent a jolt of confused desire through him.

Sherlock read his mind. “You’ll be glad for it later,” he said as he finished with John’s other hand, pulling the strap taut. John’s arms were splayed out above his head. The cords had some give, but not much. Sherlock made quick work of divesting him of his pants and trousers, tying his legs down so John was bound spread eagle to the bed. He stopped to press tickling kisses to the bottoms of his feet while John huffed breathy laughter.

“Tickle torture?” John asked, only half kidding.

Sherlock laughed. “Hardly.” He teased the bottom of John’s foot, drawing his finger deliberately up and down as John jerked and kicked rather ineffectively, unable to get away. “Although there’s an idea for another time. Do you want to know what I’m going to do to you?” He asked John, and the question wasn’t rhetorical. His face was open and curious, like he really wanted to know John’s preference, like it was just one more piece of information about John Watson to file away in that great brain of his.

“Sure,” John said. After all, fortune favored the bold, and it wasn’t like he was going to remember for much longer anyway. In for a penny.

Sherlock pulled on black gloves with a snap that echoed right down to John’s very soul. He picked up an innocent-looking white tube and squeezed a dollop onto one gloved finger. It was pearlescent and gleaming in the lamplight, and no bigger than a ribbon of toothpaste. “Capsaicin cream. It burns quite terribly, I’m told.” He grinned wickedly. “It’ll burn for hours if you don’t wash it off.”

John’s mouth went suddenly dry. “And I suppose you’re not going to be washing it off?”

“Nope,” he said, popping the ‘p’.

The weirdest thing of all was that it was like any other conversation. They could have been discussing the Met’s awful coffee or Mrs. Hudson’s new boyfriend and not the new and creative ways Sherlock had devised to make him writhe.

He took a little of the cream and swiped it over John’s lips. It felt like a heavy balm, cool and tingling, and John avoided the urge to lick it off. He rubbed a bit of the cream into John’s nipples, then sunk lower. John would have closed his legs if he could have.

“Sherlock, no.” He said, eyes widening as he caught the detective’s intent.

“Do you want to reconsider that safeword now?” Sherlock asked, eyebrow cocked and gloved fingers hovering between his legs.

_ Yes! _

John closed his eyes. “No.”

“You can beg if you want,” Sherlock said softly. “Beg me to stop. It won’t bother me any.” He licked his lips, looking suddenly nervous. “I think I might like it.”

“Well, go on then.” His lips were starting to feel warm, and his nipples were tingling. The feeling caught the interest of his cock, and it made him squirm.

Sherlock spread his arse cheeks and touched a gloved fingertip to the pucker there. It felt cold, and Sherlock rubbed gently, tapping out a little nothing rhythm, teasing. John was caught between the urge to grind down on his finger and the horror of knowing what would happen if he did. Sherlock added a little more of the cream to his finger, and oh god, it was  _ slippery _ now. John’s lips were really starting to burn, but he hardly had time to pay attention to the sensation because then Sherlock was swallowing him down in one sure motion.

“Oh  _ fuck.” _

Sherlock was going to town, setting a quick, hard pace with his mouth and tongue, and John kept still by sheer force of will. And then Sherlock hollowed his cheeks and sucked, and John’s hips stuttered back and down onto the promising pressure of the digit at his entrance, and everything exploded in a riot of pain.

“ _ Fuck,” _ John swore again. His eyes went wide and he pulled at the straps holding him to the bed. Sherlock stayed put, one finger up John’s (burning, holy  _ fuck) _ arse and his lips still closed around his flagging erection.

Sherlock dragged his finger in and out, and every movement spread the ointment further. The bastard was probably doing that on purpose. He added another finger, and the pressurestretchfullness of it was lost in the overwhelming burn. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, stop.” John’s eyes were watering, and his legs spasmed with the urge to get away.

Sherlock kept mouthing at his now-flaccid cock, not sucking so much as licking and nuzzling it as his fingers continued torturing John. John was regretting ever agreeing to this, and at this very moment, he was dangerously close to regretting ever meeting Sherlock bloody Holmes.

And then

Oh, and then the most curious thing happened. Sherlock’s fingers brushed against his prostate, and it still bloody hurt. Oh Jesus, did it fucking hurt. But bright starbursts of pleasure ricocheted through him, and John found himself spreading his legs wider, whimpering and grinding down on Sherlock’s fingers.

Sherlock gasped. He looked at John as though he were amazing, and he did that thing with his fingers again, and then again.

He fingered John, and John’s erection made a damn good attempt at a comeback, straining to life through the pain singing along his nerve endings. John bit his lip and immediately regretted it, gasping as the fire on his lips immediately spread to his tongue and filled his mouth, coating his throat. He whined, and Sherlock moaned.

And then Sherlock started _talking._ _“John,”_ he groaned, and he sounded as wrecked as John felt, as though he were the one being taken apart from the inside out. “John John John,” he babbled. “You’re so beautiful like this. _My_ John. Mine.”

He was saying nothing and using so many words to do it. He looked rapturous and lost. John was flying and falling.

Sherlock started working him faster, pistoning his fingers in and out, scraping along his prostate—and between that and the twisted, obsessive devotion pouring out of his mouth, John came with a gurgled shout. And the orgasm was fire, it was burning, and it hurt as much as it helped.

Sherlock pressed their lips together, and the fire spread.


	8. Chapter 8

It was normal. It was _so_ normal. It was all fine. John walked with a spring in his step for the whole rest of the week. Even the patients at the clinic noticed, and things between him and Sherlock had never been better. He caught Sherlock looking at him sometimes with a sappy, adoring look on his face, like he couldn’t believe his good fortune. Something that was previously wound tight and held secreted seemed to have settled in the detective, and John was glad.

Sherlock might have been the most brilliant man in London, but these days, John was feeling mighty clever himself. Move over, Sherlock Holmes. John Watson had a fantastic idea.

It was all fine.

They did it a few more times, and it became their new routine. Other couples played Scrabble or went to the movies on Saturday nights. John let Sherlock torture him. Everyone had their thing, right?

And it _was_ all fine. Until Mycroft stopped by for an unexpected visit.

John emerged from the bedroom _—the_ bedroom because at some point during the last several weeks, John had moved into Sherlock’s room through some unspoken agreement—to find Mycroft in their sitting room, looking like he just swallowed a lemon. He and Sherlock were seated opposite one another, engaged in some battle of smug facial expressions.

Mycroft raked his eyes over John in that cursory, calculating way of his. “Have a good night, Doctor Watson?”

“Fine, yeah. Slept like a baby.”

Mycroft’s face set into a deep frown, there and gone again in an instant, before he turned back to Sherlock. “A word, _brother mine?”_

Sherlock looked down his nose at Mycroft. “Anything you have to say to me you can say in front of John,” he said with a little too much bravado. It was dramatic, but Sherlock was always a drama queen.

John rolled his eyes affectionately and puffed up his chest, just a little. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t proud Sherlock cared enough about him, thought enough of him, to include him. They were sleeping together (and _sleeping together)_ now, but it still had enough of the shine of newness to be noteworthy and to give John a warm feeling in his chest.

Mycroft gave Sherlock a look. “You don’t want that,” he said quietly.

Some subtle communication passed between the two of them—the twitch of an eyebrow, the corner of a lip pulled taut—the meanings clear only to them. Sherlock’s eyes narrowed, and he got up to follow Mycroft into the hall. “A moment, John.” He murmured, brushing a kiss to his cheek in passing, then glaring at Mycroft as if daring him to say something about it.

Mycroft rolled his eyes and pushed the front door open. He held it for Sherlock, solicitous even in his obvious disapproval. The door swung shut behind them, and John could hear hushed voices in the hallway, with the occasional outburst (Sherlock, of course). John considered going to Sherlock’s rescue or—even more foolish—pressing his ear to the door, but he didn’t think for a second he’d be able to get one past either of those two.

John shrugged and settled for making tea and toast instead. Mycroft or no, it was still early on a Sunday morning. Too early to worry about state secrets and Sherlock’s older brother.

* * *

That should have been the end of it, but after Mycroft’s visit—he left shortly after their conversation with another long, pointed look at John that made him shift in his seat— Sherlock began acting strange. Strange even for him, which was saying something. He was quiet and secretive, avoiding John when at all possible. A prickle of unease settled in John at that. It reminded him of the way Sherlock used to act, back when he was afraid John would leave him for being a… for being whatever he was.

But Sherlock still came to bed at night, still settled in and curled around him, no matter what transpired during the day, so John left it alone. He could go hounding Sherlock and chasing down his secrets, but whatever was bothering him, John figured he deserved some privacy to deal with it. That wasn’t something John had historically been very good at, but even he could learn some new tricks.

The week was a quiet one. There was nothing on, no cases to speak of. Sherlock spent most of his time playing the violin or at the morgue. John stopped by to bring him dinner one night—it had been more than a day since Sherlock had last eaten, and John was in the area after his shift anyway. Sherlock didn’t even look up when John came in, nor when he said he was going home, and John sighed.

“I’ll leave this here, then,” John said, and he set the food on the long metal table next to Sherlock’s elbow.

“I’ll put it in the fridge,” Molly said, and John shot her a grateful smile.

“Thanks, Molly. Has he been at this all day?”

“Mm. Ever since I got here.” Her smile wavered. “Is everything alright?”

“Fine. Why?” John asked, too fast.

“Well it’s none of my business,” Molly hesitated. “But it’s just—he hasn’t been around much lately. Not ever since you and he—” She cut herself off, shook her head and smiled. “Like I said, none of my business.”

John looked over at Sherlock. They were talking in the same room, just a few feet away from where he was bent over a cadaver doing… something unpleasant, but it was unlikely the detective could hear them anyway. When Sherlock got into one of his moods, a bomb could go off, and it might not shake his concentration.

John liked Molly. Despite the torch she still carried for Sherlock, she was steady and kind, and he had no doubt she always had Sherlock’s best interests at heart. That was a rare enough commodity that it was enough to endear Molly to him. She was… a friend. A friend of them both, and that was nothing to sneeze at.

“Everything is fine,” John said, and he hoped it was true.

* * *

Saturday night came quickly. The atmosphere at 221b remained tense, so that John wasn’t sure if Sherlock would come, but he went into their bedroom anyway, out of a sense of hope, maybe.

John took off his shirt, and then he waited. And waited. The clock said 8:10. Sherlock wasn’t usually late, and John began to feel foolish sitting in the bedroom alone, half-dressed. Well, and he was still a doctor, and he knew where Sherlock kept the supplies. He fetched them for something to do and set them out on the nightstand, then he waited some more.

8:20 came and went, and John decided that Sherlock wasn’t coming.

He looked at the bottle of Versed and made a judgment call. He was quicker at this than Sherlock, well-practiced from giving kids booster jabs at the clinic. He drew the honey-colored liquid into a syringe and injected it into his abdomen, then discarded the needle into the sharps container that had come to live in the bedside cabinet. He cleaned up the evidence. (Evidence, as though he’d committed some kind of crime). John frowned. Well, technically it _was_ a crime.

He went to find Sherlock, not sure if he’d stepped over some unspoken line.

Sherlock was lying on the couch in his robe, looking pensive with his hands steepled under his chin. His eyes snapped shut as soon as John walked into the room, and John fought the urge to roll his.

He came to sit next to Sherlock on the couch. “Hey, budge over,” he said, not unkindly.

Sherlock made a disgruntled noise but did as John asked, pulling his legs up to make room. As soon as John sat, he pulled Sherlock’s legs over his lap and started idly rubbing his feet.

Sherlock’s eyes snapped open, and his brows furrowed. “What are you doing?”

His foot went tense under John’s hands, toes pointed and foot arched, but John doggedly worked at the muscles, digging his thumbs into the arch of Sherlock’s sole.

“Thought you were supposed to be the genius in this relationship,” John said, teasing. “It’s a foot massage.”

Sherlock still looked just as alarmed, if not more so. _“Why?”_

John concentrated on his task, thankful for the opportunity to consider his words before speaking. Something was bothering Sherlock, and he didn’t want to give him the opportunity to storm off in a huff or dissemble even further. “Because it feels good,” he said patiently. “Doesn’t it?”

Sherlock made another noncommittal noise, but John pressed a spot on his heel with a firm knuckle, and a soft moan escaped Sherlock’s mouth. John smirked, feeling utterly pleased with himself.

“You didn’t come tonight,” John said, waiting until Sherlock’s eyes had slipped shut as he sank into the feel of John’s hands working on his toes. It was a mean trick, lulling Sherlock and catching him off guard, but it wasn’t one John had planned. He’d honestly just wanted to touch Sherlock, and well—they’d better have this conversation fast, if they were going to, because John wouldn’t be able to hold onto his memories for much longer if they didn’t.

And he should probably tell Sherlock that he’d dosed himself, or he’d have something to explain in the morning. But for now, he had a little time. He waited.

“John,” he said, suddenly pulling his feet away and sitting up. He drew his knees up to his chin and looked like an overgrown child when he sat that way. “I think it’s better if we stop.”

A jolt of disappointment ran through John—curious, that—blunted though it was beneath the Versed starting to take effect. “This is because of what Mycroft said.” He wasn’t a genius, but he didn’t have to be to guess that much. Sherlock’s face grew closed off and stormy, and John reached out to grab his wrist and pull it to his stomach, still tender from the injection. “You can tell me,” he said softly. “I won’t remember anyway.”

Sherlock looked at him, eyes grown wide. “You—”

John nodded. “While I was waiting for you. So. If there’s something you want to talk about, now’d be the time to do it.” He grinned. “You even get a do-over if I don’t take it well, so try me.”

Sherlock shook his head. “John Watson, I don’t deserve you.”

“You do,” John said, brushing the hair out of Sherlock’s eyes, a simple caretaking gesture. “I don’t know what you think, but I’m no prize. I’m cranky and stubborn and getting old.” He cracked a crooked smile. “I do things like shooting myself up with illegal benzos when my boyfriend is having a row with his brother.”

“You’re _everything,”_ Sherlock said emphatically. He fixed John with a critical eye. “You’ve taken the midazolam, you’re sure?”

John rolled his eyes. “Yes, I didn’t hallucinate jabbing myself with a needle, thanks.”

“You’re everything,” Sherlock repeated, looking at his hands. “And that’s why I can’t be allowed to ruin this.”

John scowled. “Is that what Mycroft said to you? That you’d—what, scare me? Run me off screaming and clutching my pearls?”

“He said I’d go too far one day.” Sherlock looked at his hands. “He’s not wrong. I might.”

“You won’t,” John said with all the conviction in him. He didn’t know how he knew, but he just _knew._ He knew Sherlock, and he knew there was nothing Sherlock could do that would make him stop loving him. They’d crossed that bridge long ago.

“Wild dogs couldn’t keep me away from you, Sherlock Holmes. Mycroft is afraid I’ll wake up one day and realize you’re mad.” John snorted. “I already know that. Jesus Christ, this whole thing is bloody crackers. I _know_ you’re mad, and I know I am too. But Sherlock, there’s no one else I’d rather be mad with.”

“But I do,” Sherlock said, following some train of thought that was not at all intuitive to John. “Scare you, sometimes.”

“You do,” John allowed. “I love you anyway. I trust you anyway.”

“And that’s why I don’t deserve you.”

It was driving John nuts, Sherlock’s persistent self-deprecation. Fuck Mycroft, and fuck anyone else who’d ever made Sherlock feel like there was something wrong with him.

“You’re angry,” Sherlock said, nodding at John’s fists involuntarily clenched at his sides.

John blew out a harsh breath. “Not at you.” He laughed. “You know, I see the appeal. Talking to someone while knowing they won’t remember it later. I’m a bit jealous.”

“Well,” Sherlock said. “If you tell me something, you won’t remember that you did, and I can keep a secret.” He tilted his head. “It’s functionally the same thing.”

John shook his head. “It’s really not.” But Sherlock had a point, and John _did_ want to have this conversation. “You’re the most brilliant man I’ve ever met. Why do you think you’re so awful? I’ve done all this. Why do you think I’d suddenly change my mind, suddenly leave? If I’ve come this far, why would I want to stop now?”

Sherlock pursed his lips. “You’re not comfortable with it, not really. You’re okay with it insofar as you don’t have to know, don’t have to think about the things I do to you.”

John opened his mouth to protest and found that he couldn’t.

“And it’s fine,” Sherlock continued. “Really fine, because I wouldn’t expect that from you. I wouldn’t expect that from anyone, and I haven’t for a long time. But one day I’m going to go too far. There will be pain that you can’t explain away, marks that get your brain thinking, and you’ll realize that I’m _dangerous_. Really, truly dangerous.”

John laughed, bitter. “I’ve been to war, for Christ’s sake. You think I have a problem with danger?”

“I think you don’t want the war in your bedroom,” Sherlock said softly. “And I don’t blame you for it.”

John was getting angry again. Angry that Sherlock kept trying to take this from him, kept trying to tell him who he was and what he wanted. Sherlock’s mouth quirked up just the barest bit. “Ah, but you do understand a little, don’t you?” He caught one of John’s balled fists and brushed it against his mouth, nuzzling into the knuckles. “The desire to hurt, to cause pain... Why don’t you hit me?” And it wasn’t rhetorical it was… curious. Honestly curious why John didn’t punch him when the discussion wasn’t going his way.

And fuck if that didn’t just make him angrier at every bastard Sherlock had ever met in his life.

His jaw tightened. “Because I don’t want to hurt you.”

“And there’s the difference between you and I. I want to rip apart everything I love to look inside. It’s a sickness. If this is a story like one of your blog posts, it isn’t one that ends well.”

John took a deep breath, the kind Ella would approve of, and tried again. “You said you hadn’t expected it for a long time, that someone would accept you.” Now it was John’s turn to tilt his head, curious. He realized he knew very little about Sherlock’s life before they’d met, nothing except what he could infer from what people who’d known Sherlock far longer had said (drug addict, freak, psychopath).

Sherlock started to shake his head, and John reminded him. “I won’t remember, yeah? Satisfy my curiosity.” He wondered if they’d had this conversation before and if so, how many times. With a jolt, he realized it was very possible. He added, “Please.”

“Chrissy,” Sherlock said.

It wasn’t an answer that made sense to him, but John could be patient. He waited.

“A friend I had as a child, my only friend. We played pirates together.” Sherlock’s voice grew wistful, remembering.

“What happened?”

“I suggested we practice vivisection on her, and she agreed.” John winced, and Sherlock gave him a knowing look. “She was too brave for her own good. I know what you think—that I’m not a sociopath, that it’s a fantasy I have or something I say to keep people at arm’s length. It’s not. You should know that.”

John didn’t know what to say to that. Despite what the Holmes brothers thought—of him and every other person they met—he wasn’t stupid. Psychology wasn’t his specialty, but he knew the diagnostic criteria, and he knew Sherlock. Sociopathy fit. He wasn’t a young man so blinded by love that he couldn’t see what was in front of him. He shifted so that he was lying on the couch behind Sherlock, who scooted forward to make room. It was a tight squeeze—they were two grown men on a small couch, after all—but they made it work.

John wrapped his arms around Sherlock and felt the beat of his heart underneath his fingertips, though the thin fabric of his robe. Sherlock allowed himself to be held, tense but for once blessedly still. This conversation felt so terribly important, and John didn’t know how to have it.

“I’m not a child, and I’m not going to run,” he said at last, stubborn. He breathed in the scent of Sherlock’s hair, for once taller than the detective when they lay like this. “And I know he’s your brother, but fuck Mycroft. He may be the British government, but he doesn’t know everything. He certainly doesn’t know _me._ I trust you, so return the favor. Believe in me. Believe that I mean what I say.”

His little speech was met with silence, and John didn’t know if he’d said too much or too little. Sherlock didn’t say anything, just turned so that he was facing John. He buried his face in John’s chest, and John resettled his arms around him.

He didn’t know what that meant, what any of this meant, but after a while, Sherlock nodded. The room was still. They breathed together.

John bit his lip. “You can mark me, you know. If you’re—if you’re worried you’ll make a mistake, that I’ll freak out about it. What if we just say that you can, and leave it at that? I trust you, yeah?”

Sherlock lifted his head to look at him, eyes red but with the same smug skepticism lighting them from within, the look that said _are you all really this dense?_ For once, John was glad to see it. “You won’t remember this tomorrow,” Sherlock said, and it was true, as John kept reminding him. “If I did, you’d think I’d broken my word.”

“Then I’ll tell you again tomorrow,” John said obstinately. He was determined to fix this, to fix all of it.

Sherlock was soft. “With the impetus gone, why would you? You won’t know what Mycroft said to me. You won’t know Chrissy exists. You won’t know why I’m afraid.”

“Then tell _me_ again tomorrow,” John said. “This is important. Why are you so stubborn?”

Sherlock snorted. “You’re one to talk.” He nuzzled into John’s neck, leaving John perturbed and for once, utterly unsatisfied with the rules of their arrangement. The rules he made.

Sherlock was still for so long John thought he’d fallen asleep, until he spoke suddenly. “I killed my dog,” he said, voice muffled against John’s shirt. “I loved my dog.”

John held him tighter, crushing him against his chest, and something in him despaired. This was going to end so badly, he knew it all at once. The thought hit him like fear, and suddenly he would do anything to prevent it.

_Tomorrow I won’t even know anything is wrong._

He pressed a kiss to the top of Sherlock’s head. “I love you,” was all he said.

And he did. He loved this beautiful madman. He’d be the subject of a hundred experiments, volunteer for vivisection, let Sherlock flay him open if it meant he never again wondered if there was something wrong with him. _You can do anything to me,_ he wanted to say. But what good would it do?

The thought was deeply unsettling. You weren’t supposed to love a person like that.

Sherlock fell asleep first. Did he usually? How would John know? What was _usual_ for them, and how much _usual_ did John miss? He was suddenly aware of feeling left out of his own relationship, of missing pieces that Sherlock got to keep.

He snagged a pen with the tips of his fingers, one perched just barely close enough to be reached on the nearby table. He scrawled a note on his hand.

He woke up on the couch the next morning with a crick in his neck and Sherlock nowhere to be found.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's on the shorter side, but I'll make it up to you on Thursday. _Plus_ I have surprise for you a little later today 😉

Sherlock had known it couldn’t last, if he was perfectly honest with himself. He usually was. It was an oversight to let himself believe this thing with John could continue indefinitely.

But he’d been happy. He had allowed himself to think it could be fine, as fine as John said it was. He’d allowed himself to believe.

But what they had was fragile, something able to be sustained only under very specific conditions: John must not know, so Sherlock must not leave evidence; other people must not know, because they might convince John (rightly) that Sherlock was a danger. So Sherlock did his part. He was careful and circumspect, solicitous even. He tried as hard as he could to ensure John was happy with their arrangement.

And it was easy, for the most part. It was fine to keep secrets from ordinary people because ordinary people were dull and imperceptive. It was a wonder the Met could apprehend anybody at all, for all the things they missed. They didn’t notice hundreds of things all around them, and they would never notice what he and John got up to together.

Except

Except the world was not filled with solely ordinary people.

It was a good morning. Last night had been one of  _ those _ nights, and Mrs. Hudson was away. In a rare treat, he’d had John screaming for hours, loud and long. Sherlock woke up with a bone-deep feeling of contentment.

And then he emerged from the bedroom to find his brother sitting in his chair. (Of course  _ his _ chair, because when was Mycroft not as annoying as possible?) Perhaps he could make Mycroft leave. He pushed all of Mycroft’s buttons, from his weight to a certain detective inspector with the Met. Mycroft was annoyed; Mycroft was  _ leaving. _ (Yes, good,  _ leave.) _

And then John came out of the bedroom, and Sherlock’s heart sank. He saw Mycroft’s posture change, watched him catalog every tell there was: John’s hoarse voice, the stiffness in his gait, the way he scratched at his injection site. He willed Mycroft not to say anything, to let it be for once.

Mycroft was always as annoying as possible.

His brother called him into the hallway, and it was unpleasantly like being thirteen again. Like being asked  _ where is Redbeard? _ He’d been defiant then, and he was now.

“What did you do to John?” Mycroft asked in hushed tones.

“It’s called sadomasochism, brother dear. It’s all the rage. You should try it some time.” Because he could play the annoying younger brother so well.

Mycroft rolled his eyes. “You won’t make me stop by trying to embarrass me with sex. He doesn’t remember last night. Why?”

Sherlock lifted his chin, obstinately close-mouthed.

And yet Mycroft was better at this than he was. Mycroft had  _ taught _ him deduction, and his mercury-quick mind read what he needed in Sherlock’s face.

He said one word. One word, to make Sherlock deflate utterly. “Sherlock,” in that tone of voice that managed to convey such hateful  _ disappointment. _ Not anger, not disapproval. Just resignation that his younger brother was still a freak, still unfit for polite society.

“He offered,” Sherlock said, and it sounded weak even to his ears. Like he really was a child again, defending himself like one.

“And of course a man like Doctor Watson would never overextend himself to please another, is that right?” He tapped his umbrella on the ground, frowning at some speck of dust on his collar that offended him. (Fake. He mimed boredom to set people on edge.) “You know better. What people say and what they mean are two separate things.”

“He’s not lying,” Sherlock said.

“He doesn’t think he’s lying. There’s a difference.”

Sherlock looked at the door, conscious of John on the other side of it. This was  _ private _ and not for Mycroft. Mycroft, who could never let him have just one good thing to himself. “We’re careful,” he said.  _ “I’m _ careful.”

“Like you were careful with that neighbor girl? What was her name, Christine?”

“Chrissy,” Sherlock said, narrowing his eyes. Mycroft didn’t forget names—that was Sherlock. “You just wanted me to say it.”

“I just wanted to make sure you remembered what happened last time.” He laid a heavy hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. “Doctor Watson is good for you, Sherlock. I’m only looking out for your happiness. I’d hate to see you break another one of your toys.”

“This isn’t what you think,” Sherlock said, and Mycroft merely raised an eyebrow.

“Isn’t it?”

And then Sherlock had shouted, and Mycroft had left—but he planted a niggling doubt in Sherlock’s mind, and once it took hold, it would not let go.

So he avoided John, although he knew John hated that; and if Sherlock had his way, Saturday evening would have come and gone without note. As far as he was concerned, John was free of him, and Mycroft could rest easy in the knowledge that Sherlock wouldn’t be his sole problem again so soon.

(He did love John. He did want to keep him.)

Except Saturday night didn’t go at all how Sherlock planned because John (brilliant, wonderful,  _ perfect _ John) had made up his mind for the both of them.

Sherlock had tried to call it off. He was trying to be  _ good, _ to impress upon John how dangerous he was—and John had done the most incredible thing. He had offered Sherlock  _ more.  _ (“Mark me, if you want.”)

John said it was fine—all fine, and Sherlock so badly wanted to believe him. It had been a beautiful, dizzying, worrying conversation, and John wouldn’t remember any of it.

He left early the next morning, while the sky was still dark, and John was deep in a chemically-aided sleep. John had asked Sherlock to trust him, and so he would, but he was still possessed by the urge to run, to hide. The fear that maybe Mycroft was right (he usually was).

But whatever this was—this devastating, fragile thing with John—it would have to wait because Moriarty was still free, still ambulatory, still  _ breathing, _ and that was something that could not be allowed to continue. And best of all, Sherlock had a lead.

* * *

Sherlock spent the morning checking in with his homeless network. It required constant maintenance to keep it humming along, but for the most part it was a hands-off endeavor. The vagrants he employed were perfectly capable of slipping him a five pound note with a name and address scribbled on it, or selling him a newspaper with a secret code in the pages, but Moriarty had eyes and ears everywhere, Sherlock was sure of it. He had his fingers in every pie—no one who called themselves the consulting criminal could get away with less.

And so Sherlock left his coat at home, shrugged on an oversized hooded sweatshirt and jeans, and went for a stroll. He walked quickly, hood pulled up around his ears. It made him look unremarkable, which wasn’t a hardship given the inhospitable weather. He slouched down and made himself unobtrusive, just one more harried body pulling itself through London on a grey morning.

He was meeting a man under a bridge, and it was cold and damp outside. The air was fetid and wet, and it made his clothes stick to his legs, made his hair cling to his face in a most unpleasant manner. This man was one he’d seen many times before, a drunk with bleary bloodshot eyes and a bulbous nose threaded with broken capillaries. He seemed insensible at first glance, slumped over a pile of belongings and soggy cardboard on the pavement, but Sherlock knew better. He slipped a fiver into a crumpled, dirty paper cup, and the man came alive, turning shrewd eyes on Sherlock.

“Someone’s been asking about you,” the man said. He was sober (hadn’t yet collected enough money for a bottle), but his hands shook with a telltale tremor.

“Asking who?” Sherlock asked, slumping forward to pretend to fix the laces of his trainers.

“Everyone. All of us.”

So Moriarty knew about his homeless network. “And what has everyone told him?”

Asking was a formality when you knew the answers. The drunk said something, and he disregarded it in favor of connecting the pieces in his mind. His network was useful, but not loyal. They’d have told everything they knew, for the right price. But the sum total of their knowledge didn’t amount to much, which was obvious to anyone with half a functioning brain.

Conclusion: Moriarty wasn’t after information.

“I don’t suppose this man left a phone number, an address, some way to find him?” Unlikely, but worth the ask.

The man shook his head, went back to rattling his cup of coins at passersby. Sherlock straightened, shoved his hands in his pockets and started back the way he’d come. He passed an elderly woman holding a newspaper over her head, running for cover and a middle-aged couple with their hands linked, strolling heedless of the rain.

John would be up by now. Sherlock debated the merits of going back home versus visiting a few more locations to gather more information. (No, that was an excuse). John would be disappointed that he’d disappeared yet again (it was becoming somewhat of an embarrassing pattern), and something appealed about the idea of putting off their reunion for as long as possible.

And then there was movement, the barest brush of sensation as someone reached into his back pocket. They were good, but not that good. Sherlock whirled around and grabbed at the unseen pickpocket, mentally adjusting when it turned out the thief was much smaller than he’d originally anticipated.

It was a child. A frightened looking child, especially after Sherlock grabbed his wrist in an iron grip. Sherlock fished in his pocket and pulled out a CD. His eyes narrowed. “What is this?”

“I don’t know,” The boy cried, wide-eyed. (No older than twelve, a runaway, not an addict, no gang affiliation, petty thief.)

“Then why did you put it in my pocket?”

“A man paid me. Said a tall man that looked like you would be round this morning, that I should give this to you.” He gulped. “That I shouldn’t let you see me.

He’d been followed or outwitted, and Sherlock didn’t like the idea of either one.

* * *

As it happened, Sherlock needn’t have worried about facing John’s disappointment. He was gone when Sherlock returned, probably at the pub with Stamford or Lestrade watching the game.

Sherlock pulled the disk out of his pocket and studied it. It was unmarked and homemade, glinting dimly in the kitchen light. It might have a virus, so he loaded it on John’s computer.

It was empty save for an mp4 file, and Sherlock clicked it. The scene opened on a closeup, too close, of a grinning mouth. The mouth curved down into a severe frown. “You idiot. Why are you trying to shove it in my teeth? Back  _ up.” _ That voice.

The camera pulled back, and Moriarty’s face came into view. He was annoyed and flapping his hands as the camera jerked. There was a small grunt as the cameraman  tripped over his own feet, and a wide showy grin replaced itself on Moriarty’s face. “Sherlock!” he singsonged. “Have I got a show for you. I know how you like your pets, but I think one ran away from home.”

The camera panned wide, giving Sherlock a view of the room—bare concrete floor with drainage grates, dirty white-tiled walls—butcher shop.

_ “Idiot,”  _ Moriarity snarled. “Give me that.” The camera jerked as Moriarty wrested it from his henchman, and now his voice sounded much closer. It was dripping with menace as he spoke again. “I found her for you.”

There was a metal table, and a woman lying on it. She was sobbing quietly around a piece of duct tape on her mouth, and she turned her head away when Moriarty stuck the camera in her face. “Time for your close up,” he crooned.

When she wouldn’t move, a gun came into view, pressed right up against her temple. Sherlock could hear the gun cock through the laptop speakers. “Look at the camera,” Moriarty told the woman.

She did, crying harder. Sherlock realized with a jolt that he knew her. Her bright blonde hair had gone dishwater dark with age, and her face was leaner than he remembered. Same bright blue eyes, now leaking with tears. Same nose crooked from a fall off her bicycle.

“Chrissy,” he breathed, as the Moriarty on the screen ripped the tape from her mouth. She screamed, and Sherlock closed his eyes just briefly, before forcing them back open again.

“Say hello to your old pal Sherlock,” Moriarty told her. “We’re making a movie.”

He dug the barrel of the gun into her head, and she sobbed harder.

“Don’t,” Sherlock said quietly.

“Help me,” Chrissy cried. “Oh, someone. Help.”

The camera was taken away—passed back to the original camera man and mounted on a tripod. Sherlock’s eye caught on a tray full of sharps as Moriarty dipped his hand down into it. He held up a scalpel and turned it this way and that, letting it catch the (dim, yellow, halogen) light.

“I know what you like, Sherlock,” he said, addressing the camera directly now. He made eye contact with Sherlock through the screen, and his face split into a demented grin as he set the scalpel down. “But I think I’d rather you watch what I like.” He picked up a hacksaw, rusty and coated with dried blood.

He started with her fingers and worked all the way down to her toes. By the time he was done, she fit neatly into three bags.

Sherlock watched the whole thing because he owed her that much. A witness, at the end. This had happened to her because she had once been his friend, and because he was the kind of person who cavorted with dangerous psychopath criminals to prove he was clever. Because it was  _ fun. _

Moriarty came back in extreme closeup, eyes wild and face spattered with blood. “I know your secret,” he taunted. “And if I can have such fun with this one, just imagine what I could do with your favorite pet. We were made for each other, Sherlock.”

He started to say something else, but Sherlock didn’t hear it. He snapped the laptop shut and shoved it bodily away. His blood was thundering in his ears in a dull roar. He took the CD and snapped it in two, then crumbled the pieces in the rubbish, feeling for once… afraid.


	10. Chapter 10

John woke up with a crick in his neck and writing on his hand. He found it while splashing water on his face and frowned. That was definitely his handwriting.

_ Tell Sherlock he can _

John frowned at it. Can what? Waking on Sunday mornings was always a little disorienting, but their usual routine helped. If he lost a little time, at least he woke in their bed, where he woke every morning. He’d never come to on the couch before, and he hadn’t yet woken alone in the flat after one of their sessions together.

John flicked through his memories of the night before. He’d injected himself, they were talking and then… and then he drew a blank.

He looked at the time on his phone. It was half ten. He usually didn’t sleep so long. Sherlock must have fine-tuned the dosage he gave John because John usually didn’t wake feeling this groggy either. The thought of Sherlock carefully calculating illicit medication for him made his lips twitch upward.

He had a text from Mike, and he opened it.

* * *

In truth it was good to get out of the house for a breath of fresh air. The city was dull and wet, but it was good to be outside. John stepped onto the porch and pulled a great breath of air into his lungs. The chill in the air stung the insides of his nose and brought a grin to his face. It had been a while since he’d seen friends, since he’d done anything at all that didn’t have to do with Sherlock.

He met Mike at a pub ten minutes from their house. He was still enthused about the little joys of being alive, so he decided to walk. Sod the rain. Spending time with Mike was comfortable and pleasant, as always. They grabbed lunch in the pub and shouted good-naturedly at the game.

Mike talked him into a second beer, and John was licking the foam off his lip when Mike said, “So. You and Sherlock?”

John was ready for the impulse to dissemble, the desire to change the subject. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that he’d have wanted to deny everything. Had done, on more than one occasion. Instead, he found he didn’t want to do anything but let the big, dopey grin pour over his face. “Me and Sherlock,” he confirmed.

Mike clapped him on the back. “Good for you.” He raised his glass. “And I’ll expect a thank-you at the wedding.”

John laughed and clinked his beer against Mike’s. “We’ll send you a box of chocolates.”

Talk turned to Mike’s wife and children—John learned that his eldest had just won a maths tournament. “She’ll be a doctor like her father,” John teased.

“Here’s hoping,” Mike said with a pleased grin. “I could use someone else to field medical questions at family reunions.”

They talked about Bart’s and their days in school together. The game ended. John’s team lost, and he picked up the tab although Mike tried to insist.

“A bet’s a bet,” John said firmly. Letting Mike pay felt too much like charity, felt too much like a subtle reminder that he was a  _ real _ doctor while John was a marginally employed blogger who did occasional shifts treating scrapes and sniffles. Mike was too good of a man to ever imply or even think it—but John felt the sting of it anyway.

Still, he went home feeling lighter. The walk was bracing after the close quarters in the pub, all those bodies generating heat while the alcohol did the same. John took in the sights and let his mind wander over the note he’d found on his hand.

_ Tell Sherlock he can _

He thought about Mycroft and Sherlock—thought about how skittish the usually-arrogant detective had been since his brother’s visit. He shook his head. What  _ didn’t _ he already let Sherlock do?

Oh.

_ Oh. _

* * *

Sherlock was wound tighter than a spring. He was vibrating with unspent energy, with the need to  _ do _ something (like pluck Moriarty’s teeth out one by one). Moriarty wanted John, and that wasn’t something that could be allowed to happen. It was inconceivable, an eventuality totally outside the realm of possibility.

John still wasn’t home. Likely wouldn’t be home for another hour if he decided to do something  _ responsible _ like pick up the shopping on the way home.

He picked up his phone and dialed. There was one ring, two, and then a familiar voice on the line.

“What a surprise,” the voice on the other end drawled. “I didn’t think you  _ could _ make phone calls. Whatever this is, could you make it quick? I have lunch with the French ambassador in five minutes.”

“I need you to put surveillance on John,” Sherlock said, and something in the tone of his voice made Mycroft straighten in his chair. Sherlock could hear it in the faint rustle of fabric over the line, in the timbre of his voice that was now stripped of his usual affectated boredom.

“You say that as if I don’t already have it.” There was a pause, a gesture to his assistant and something scribbled on a sheet of paper. Then the obvious question. “Why? I hope you’ve heeded the warning I gave you last time, brother dear.”

“Moriarty,” Sherlock said. That would be quite enough for Mycroft to go on.

He hung up the phone—if Mycroft had a reply, it wouldn’t be an important one—and set it back on the coffee table. He paced. He stared at his mobile as though it were a snake that could bite, then he picked it up once more and texted John.

_ I need you. _

_ -SH _

John would assume he’d hurt himself, probably. Then he’d catch himself and (rightly) figure that Sherlock needed something small and mundane, something  _ irritating _ that he could well do himself. But the thought would nag at him like a burr, and he would wonder until he came home to see that Sherlock was all right. It was manipulative, which was a bit not good. It would work, which was more important.

Moriarty’s blood-soaked grin rose in his mind unbidden.

Mycroft had a network more vast and capable than Sherlock’s own, and he’d probably have all the relevant files on his desk within an hour. He thought back to the disk, the video it contained, and hoped he had the only copy. He was sure he did; it had been a message for his eyes only, that much was clear… and yet his assumptions about Moriarty kept proving themselves wrong. The man craved  _ chaos,  _ and that was a very dangerous trait in an enemy indeed.

* * *

John arrived worried. It was the barest hint of concern, but it was there in the cadence of footfalls on the stairs, the way the door banged open slightly harder than necessary as he hurried to make sure Sherlock wasn’t bleeding out and hadn’t burned the flat down.

He visibly relaxed once he caught sight of Sherlock sprawled out on the couch thinking, and the infinitesmal relief on his face flowed straight through into put-upon, long-suffering annoyance. “You needed me?”

“Fetch my laptop?” Sherlock asked innocently.

John rolled his eyes. “Swear to Christ, what do you do when I’m not around?” he muttered, but he found the computer under a pile of papers in the kitchen and brought it to Sherlock nevertheless.

Sherlock had wanted John home, home and out of harm’s way, at least until Mycroft could start putting security measures in place.  _ (No, what you  _ want _ is for John to never leave your side, so you can look after him always. Like a pet.) _

(Not like a pet.)

But John came close, and Sherlock was possessed by a sudden  _ want _ that seized him quite unexpectedly. He took the laptop and deposited it out of harm’s way before grabbing John’s wrist in one fluid motion, dragging him onto the couch. John landed sprawled over Sherlock, and the heavy bulk of him felt positively delightful. Sherlock nuzzled into his neck, taking little licks, inhaling the scent of the outside world on him.

Formaldehyde. Morgue. Bart’s—interesting.

“What’s gotten into you?” John asked on a laugh, pulling back to look at him.

“Nothing yet,” Sherlock said, quirking an eyebrow suggestively. John chuckled and kissed him again, leaving little nipping bites along his jaw as he let his hands wander. He wanted to be closer, wanted to do away with all this clothing—excessive, irritating layers of it.

They necked for a while more, long enough for Sherlock to become entirely wound up in John, the smellfeeltaste of him, when John suddenly pulled back. “Just a minute, love.”

It took Sherlock’s lust-addled mind a moment to catch up, to register the sudden absence of John and the possible meanings behind it. He sat up on the couch, pushing himself upright with an elbow. He watched as John got off the couch and walked to where his jacket was hanging near the door. John must have seen the question in his eyes because he was quick to reassure Sherlock as he rooted around in his jacket pocket for something.

“This is for you,” he said, handing Sherlock a little parcel. He cleared his throat. “For us,” he clarified.

Sherlock took the small item with interest, the fog in his brain dissipating with the task of a mystery to solve, however small. It was a wadded terry rag, threadbare from being washed and multiple times. It smelled of heat and bleach. A rubber band was wrapped tight around it to keep the cloth in place. Sherlock turned it over in his hand before unwinding the rubber band.

“Careful,” John prompted.

Something dangerous wrapped in a flannel—something sharp then. He guessed it before he opened it, but it was still a shock to see that he was right. For what purpose—?

“A scalpel,” he said, staring at the little blade he now held in his hand.

That made John nervous, for some reason. “I, uh, stopped by Bart’s to borrow it.” He frowned. Shifted his weight to the other foot. “It’s been sterilized, I made sure.”

A thrill ran through Sherlock. Not just any scalpel, a scalpel used to conduct _ autopsies. _ Something pulled in his chest at the thought of John leaving the pub, tipsy and determined, to traipse across town for this. He hadn’t caught a cab, he had walked. Molly didn’t work on Sundays, so he had stolen it. He closed his eyes to visualize it in perfect detail.

John Watson did that for him.

John had already expressed reluctance to give up their routine, likely out of a sense of duty, a desire to keep him happy, but it wasn’t Saturday. There was nothing in their agreement that said anything about doing this twice in one week, and John was handing him a  _ scalpel. _

This was different. This was  _ new.  _ He didn’t know what the rules were.

John was waiting for him to say something.

He tried, and his voice got caught on the first syllable. Sherlock swallowed hard, the words suddenly sticking in his throat. “You want me to cut you?” He breathed.

John shifted to the other foot. “Well. I mean. If you want?” he said, and it came out a question. “I thought we could.”

Sherlock swallowed again, mouth suddenly unbearably dry. He stood up because John was still standing, and it felt like a conversation that should be had face to face.

“Do you want…?” he asked, gesturing to John’s stomach, smoothing his hand over the curve of belly there. Meaning  _ do you want me to get the midazolam? _ For a moment he saw a flash of long, snarled dishwater blonde hair. He saw duct tape gag, smeared mascara, beggingpleadingcrying. At the moment, the idea of John bound and insensible (like her) horrified him, right down to the very fiber of his being, but if John wanted it…

The thought didn’t finish itself. John just shook his head.

“No, love.” He pressed the handle of the scalpel into Sherlock’s hand more insistently, folding Sherlock’s long fingers around it. “Not today, I think.”

“So, what…?” Sherlock trailed off, at a loss. There was the obvious, of course. The obvious conclusion that John was inviting him to cut into his flesh—was inviting him to cut into his flesh and leave a memory, both body and mind—but that was hope beyond hope. It wasn’t conceivable and didn’t bear dwelling on. He must have missed something.

John wrapped his arms around Sherlock’s neck and drew him in, kissing him again. It was deep and slow, and Sherlock found his own arms winding around John’s back, mindful of the sharp blade that dangled from one of them. They found their way back onto the couch, where this had begun last night. John brought a hand up to cup the side of Sherlock’s face, and he saw something—a flash of ink.

He caught John’s hand and tilted it so it could be read. The words were was smudged and faint—half of it had been washed clean with astringent public toilet soap. Sherlock read it anyway.

He read it again, and then again, and he pressed a deliberate kiss to John’s palm. John was looking at him with a gleam of mischief in his eye, and Sherlock just shook his head. “You clever, wondrous thing. So you really mean—?” He was doing a poor job of finishing his thoughts tonight, but everything about this was so surreal.

“I know you feel guilty, yeah?” Sherlock didn’t answer. “Don’t. Fuck Mycroft and whatever he said to you.” Sherlock smiled at the echo from last night. He set the blade on the table and twisted his hands in John’s shirt to pull him closer. John was warm and responsive beneath his hands, and this—this was what he wanted. John alive and vital, groaning under him, chest grown flushed and pink under the collar of his shirt, tongue darting out to run along the shell of Sherlock’s ear and wrest a moan from him.

“Too many clothes,” he gasped, and the pulled apart to shuck shirts and shoes, pants and socks. It wasn’t artful, but it was expedient. The shortest distance between clothed and naked was ripping the clothes off one another between fevered kisses. When John was fully nude, Sherlock just looked at him, taking in the sight.

“Like what you see?” John asked, and it was cocky and friendly and just right.

“Very much.”

Sherlock picked up the scalpel and held it poised over John’s skin. He was breathing heavily, and John reached out and rubbed a thumb over the back of his hand, just a careless, casual gesture. It was unfathomably comforting. It grounded him.

He took John’s arm in hand and drew the scalpel over the inside of his wrist, light enough to tickle, so that John twitched with the effort of remaining still. The blade was sharp, and it left a thin red welt of a line. John had been holding his breath, and he exhaled in a noisy shudder when Sherlock moved the knife away from the delicate veins of his wrist.

Sherlock traced a ghostly line up up up, to the top of John’s arm and across the meat of his shoulder. He dragged the knife along the shelf of his collarbones, watching the way John’s pulse pounded as the sharp edge drew near to the hollow at the base of his throat. Sherlock drew it away and pressed a kiss there before tracing the scalpel down John’s other arm. When he got to the tip of a finger, Sherlock pressed down just a bit, just enough to bring a bead of blood to the surface.

John sucked in a breath, and Sherlock smiled. He could feel his eyes crinkling at the corners. How this man trusted him—it was mad. It was dizzying.

“Turn your arms over,” Sherlock murmured, and John did. He drew quick, firm strokes over the back of one arm and then the other, three on each side. He earned a gasp for each one—music. Blood ran ruby, dripped slow and sensuous, and Sherlock felt lightheaded.

By the time he set the scalpel down for the final time, John was bleeding from a dozen shallow cuts, and Sherlock was glorying in it. John was breathing hard, wet and sticky and vital. His cock was standing at attention, stiff and straining from arousal and adrenaline, and Sherlock was on it in an instant, swallowing it down and burying his nose in the blonde curls there. He tasted like salt and skin, and Sherlock licked, sucked, and worshiped at the temple of John Watson. John had his hands buried in Sherlock’s hair, not pulling, just gripping it tight. His thumbs were massaging the top of Sherlock’s scalp in a way that felt entirely too good, thumbnails rasping and sending little shiver-shocks down his spine.

It took him a moment to realize when John’s grip grew tighter that he was trying to pull Sherlock off. He let go with a wet, obscene pop, lips sensitive and flushed, looking at John with a slightly dazed expression.

There was that mischief again, the spark of something wicked as John kept hold of his hair, pulling hard enough to hurt, hard enough to force Sherlock to keep eye contact with him as he—

Sherlock sucked in a breath.

John drew his bleeding arm over his wet, spit-slick cock, spreading blood over it. The red instantly went pink and thin when mixed with saliva. It dripped slow and tantalizing, pooling at the base of his prick. A low, thin whine filled the room, and Sherlock realized belatedly it was him. He lunged forward to taste it, stopped by a flash of brightness, of pain—of John’s hand still fisted in his hair.

“Hold on, you vampire,” John chucked. He gave Sherlock’s head a little shake. “Do you want it?” He asked, and the innocent question was somehow  _ filthy. _ It lit Sherlock’s blood up like a pyre.

“Yes,” Sherlock breathed.

“What do you say?”

“Please,” fell out of his mouth, quick and ready. “John, please.”

John let him go with a final sharp tug, and Sherlock grabbed him, digging fingers into his thighs. He licked in delicate, kittenish strokes, groaning at the taste of copper that flooded his mouth. He licked until it was gone then engulfed John’s prick once more, letting it stretch his lips and fill his throat, chasing the lingering essence of him. There was an exhale and a thud as John tipped his head back, as it made contact with the wall behind them.

He groaned, “Christ, Sherlock,” and Sherlock merely hummed in agreement, bobbing up and down on John’s cock.

John was squirming, vivid and alive, and then he grew still. The hair on the back of Sherlock’s neck prickled, and he looked up to find John watching him, eyes grown dark and serious. The blood from his cuts had trickled to a sluggish crawl. It looked like it tickled. John followed his gaze where it rested on those cherry rivulets and smiled. He reached a thumb out to run it around the rim of Sherlock’s mouth, teasing the corner of it where it was stretched around his cock. He dipped the finger in, stretching Sherlock wider still with a delicious burn.

He fucked his thumb slowly in and out alongside his cock, watching it disappear. Sherlock held still and let him, watching the way the flush on John’s chest deepened and spread, the way his mouth fell open in pure, transcendent lust.

The way that mouth opened to ask, “Can I have you?” Sliding his finger out to paint a wet trail down Sherlock’s chin, his throat, his chest, as far as John could reach before the edge of the couch stopped him.

“God yes,” Sherlock said, and it was loud in the quiet room.

John pushed him back and got off the couch, got down on the floor alongside him. He ran his hands over Sherlock’s torso, down, down, hitching up a knee and bending to lick—

Sherlock moaned as John laved his entrance with a tongue, making broad, flat strokes that felt wet and  _ amazing. _ He swirled his tongue, dipping it in—more soft, flat licks. John drove Sherlock wild, teasing and stroking. He held Sherlock down, pinning his hips in place when he started to squirm. Sherlock’s cock was leaking and untouched, painfully hard where it was resting against his belly.

He was making the most undignified sounds. He could have kissed John (clever John,  _ wonderful _ John) when he pulled a tube of lubricant seemingly from thin air—did kiss him, in fact, hot and wet and urgent. John slicked up his fingers and ran them ghostly over Sherlock’s twitching, oversensitized flesh. He dipped a finger in, just a bit, then pulled it back out. Circled the hole tapping out a rhythm.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “Morse code,” he accused, and John laughed.

“Come on, come on,” he urged, bucking back to try to impale himself on John’s fingers. He was as ready as he was ever going to be, as ready as he’d been in his life. He was still riding the high of John’s blood in his mouth. He wanted John in him  _ now. _

John, who simply raised an eyebrow and went  _ slower, _ damn him. So slow Sherlock could feel every centimeter of skin, every point of contact: John’s fingers in his arse, John’s hand on his hip bruising-tight. He squirmed again and was rewarded with a sharp, stinging slap on the underside of his thigh. He moaned at the sensation of it, hoping for more, but John took his time.

“And you call me a sadist,” Sherlock gasped. John was going to drive him out of his mind.

“You are.” John said with a wicked grin. “Maybe I’m starting to see the appeal.”

And oh, John’s brand of sadism was glorious and terrible. He made gentleness a weapon, wringing every bit of pleasure from Sherlock’s body until he was insensible with it, rolling on endorphins like a heroin high. Sherlock was surely being loud enough that Mrs. Hudson (and possibly the rest of the neighbors) could hear, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. Not when John was doing  _ that _ with his fingers. He couldn’t think about Moriarty, nor the blood-soaked video—the entirety of his world narrowed to the pinprick of light that was John.

When John finally sank his cock into him, Sherlock could have wept at the relief of it. John moved slow and relentless, driving into him with purpose, dragging his cock against his prostate on every stroke. It made Sherlock see stars, but he needed—

He reached down to take hold of his aching prick and John batted his hand away. He pinned Sherlock’s hands up by his head, holding them against the cushion of the carpet. He bent forward to press fluttering, tickling kisses to Sherlock’s eyelids, one and then the other, rolling his hips in a deadly rhythm all the while.

“You know I could do this for a very, very long time,” John said. His voice was almost conversational but there was an edge to it that gave him away. There was a fine sheen of sweat on his skin that Sherlock wanted to taste, that was surely stinging the lines he’d drawn with the scalpel earlier.

“Sadist,” Sherlock said again.

Whatever else John was, lover and friend, doctor and— _ oh _ , brilliant, what was that thing with his tongue—he was not a liar. It went on and on. On and on until Sherlock couldn’t stand it anymore. He begged.

“Please,” he gasped.

“Please what?” John mouthed it against his collarbone, tracing the shelf of it with his tongue.

“Touch me,” Sherlock begged.

He did. His fist closed around Sherlock’s cock, and Sherlock arched into it. John started pumping in sure, steady strokes, and Sherlock’s eyes rolled back in his head. It was good, so good, but— oh, it wasn’t  _ enough. _ He knocked his head back against the carpet in frustration, and he didn’t miss John’s sudden alarm. He was still broken, wasn’t he? Still the monster.

Sherlock felt tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, a hot wash of shame beginning to bloom. It was so much, too much. Sensation and light,  _ John. _ He was falling, drowning.

“Look at me,” John murmured, and his voice cut through the spiraling thoughts, cut through the din in Sherlock’s head. The voice— _ that _ voice, that beloved voice. It was commanding in its softness. How could he do anything but obey it?

He looked.

And John was smiling at him, just smiling down, kind eyes crinkled at the edges, sweat and the furrowed set of brow (concentration, arousal, imminent orgasm averted). “It’s alright,” John said. And then, “Tell me what you need.”

Sherlock wanted to close his eyes, to look away. To do anything but lay here, flayed open and pinned like a specimen, wings secured to velvet. But John said to look, and so he did.

But he still couldn’t say it. It was too much and not enough, and then John reached and grabbed and pressed the scalpel back into his hand. The metal was cool and bracing in his palm. It grounded him into points of contact—the scalpel in his hand, John in him, around him, above him.

“It’s alright,” John said, and whatever else John was, he was not a liar.

He reached out with a trembling hand and scored a line across John’s chest, above his heart. In a fit of sudden, perverse inspiration, he drew its mirror on himself. John’s eyes widened as he did it, like he might take the blade away—as if hurting John was fine, but hurting himself was unacceptable, and no; that was ridiculous. No one should ever hurt John (and yet, and yet, and yet.) His mind quailed at it. Stutter-stopping at the paradox that was his own love (twisted, limping thing) and sexuality.

John lifted the knife from his fingers and set it aside. He hoisted Sherlock’s knees and pounded into him with renewed purpose, hard and bright and  _ yestheregood. _

Sherlock was right; John’s sweat did sting in a fresh cut, and yet it was only transport. Only pain. John came with a grunt, with his heart pressed to Sherlock’s. Their blood mingled together, and the pain and pleasure did too. It all ran together until Sherlock couldn’t tell if he was crying or laughing, if it was orgasm or death.

They remembered it all in the morning.


	11. Chapter 11

Sherlock woke before dawn the next morning. He usually did. What wasn’t usual was the way John tightened his grip around Sherlock’s middle as he tried to creep from the bed. John appeared to be sleeping for all intents and purposes. His eyes were closed and his face was still soft with sleep, but there was nothing accidental or soft about the way he dragged Sherlock into himself, hauling him back from the edge of the bed without looking.

“Stay,” he murmured, nuzzling into the space beneath Sherlock’s chin.

Sherlock held himself tense, ready to extricate himself—but John was warm and smelled like sleep and soap. Sherlock let himself go limp, sinking back into the simple animal comfort of it. He didn’t expect to fall back asleep.

But he must have because by the time he opened his eyes again, the sun was streaming through the open window, and the smell of bacon frying was filtering through the open door.

When he padded into the living room, John gave him a smile. “Good timing,” he said. “I was just about to come get you.” John set two identical plates on the table, both piled high with the bacon he’d smelled, eggs, and slices of homemade bread Mrs. Hudson had sent up the other day.

Sherlock wandered into the sitting room and flipped on his laptop. Mycroft, Moriarty, Chrissy. He had allowed himself to become distracted yesterday, but there was a case on and work to do—an  _ important _ case because it involved John’s well-being. He was clicking through his emails looking for anything of note (boring, boring, mildly interesting—that one was a liar—boring), when John came over and snapped the lid shut.

“I made breakfast, and you’re going to eat it.”

“I’m not hungry,” Sherlock tried, but his transport chose that moment to betray him. His stomach, reacquainted with the concept of food, gurgled loudly.

“Uh-huh,” John said, bodily steering Sherlock into a chair. “Sit. When’s the last time you’ve eaten?”

(Friday.) “No idea.”

Because John was wearing the look that said  _ I could still kick your arse if I had to, _ Sherlock sat, and he ate. He was running through the facts he knew. Moriarty had taken Chrissy to a butcher’s shop. There were a great many butcher’s shops in London, but perhaps if he could narrow down the location Chrissy was taken from, he could—

—he realized he had no idea where Chrissy lived. In his mind, she had become a touchstone, a symbol that represented the reason he must never… be himself. In his mind, she was forever nine years old, pigtailed, scabby-kneed, and missing a front tooth. It hadn’t occurred to him to wonder how she’d grown up, who she’d become, where she lived. Those weren’t important details. They weren’t things that mattered unless they’d help him solve the case, and yet he felt a peculiar kind of loss at the realization.

“Sherlock?” He emerged from his reverie with a start. John was saying something. “Where’d you go, love?”

John was looking at him, concern etched on his remarkably expressive face. John, who was reaching across the table for him. Sherlock’s eyes were drawn to a neat row of plasters that lined the back of his arm, and here was another peculiar feeling but one that was becoming all too familiar—the wash of guilt that followed. He was suddenly acutely aware of how much John did for him.

“Thank you?” He tried. The furrow between John’s brows deepened, as though he was wondering if Sherlock hit his head. That wasn’t the correct response, try again. “Thank you for breakfast. And for this.” He brushed his hand gently over the bandages, and John smiled.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

There were madmen on the loose, but John was pleased, and that, at least, was right with the world.

Sherlock hesitated. John seemed… fine. Sherlock took him in—relaxed, well-rested, iron levels beginning to replenish after the introduction of red meat into his system. His expression was easy and open, and he didn’t shy away as Sherlock continued to stroke his skin over the plasters. The evidence suggested that nothing was wrong, and yet, frustratingly, Sherlock found he was in need of reassurance. How tiresome.

“Last night,” he started, “was that… good?” And what he meant was,  _ are we good? _

“Well, I think I might be dating a vampire,” John laughed. “But there were parts of it I quite enjoyed. No complaints here.” An echo of last night’s wicked grin spread over his face. He scooted his chair back, stood with a groan and a stretch that made the vertebrae in his back pop, then cleared their breakfast plates. He dropped a quick kiss to the top of Sherlock’s head as he walked by.

John was trying, Sherlock realized. For him. If John was trying, he would try too. He would be considerate. He followed John into the kitchen and nudged him aside as John turned on the tap to do the dishes.

“Your hands,” Sherlock said at John’s questioning look. He knew for a fact there were cuts there, knew where every scar and bruise and scrape lived. Maybe one day he’d own all of them, have put all of them in place himself like a map of constellations. The thought brought with it a shiver of rightness.

They passed an easy half hour in the kitchen— Sherlock washed the dishes, and John dried them. The other shoe didn’t drop. It was… nice.

* * *

And yet things couldn’t stay so easy. Mycroft turned up at their house while John was out—fortuitous timing, or suspicious—in order to drop off a folder.

“Doing leg work?” Sherlock drawled. “Can’t have done much. You’ve put on a few pounds.”

Mycroft ignored the jab. It was lazy—Sherlock wasn’t really trying, and he knew it. In truth, Sherlock was relieved to see that Mycroft was here, that he had information, although he’d never say so. He didn’t need to because, annoyingly, Mycroft could always tell. It was a professional courtesy to pretend they didn’t love one another.

Right now Mycroft was holding the folder out, though he pulled it back before Sherlock’s hand could close around it. “Might I ask why you’re not sharing this information with the Metropolitan Police?”

“You know why,” Sherlock said, reaching forward to snatch at the folder. He got his hands on it, but Mycroft held on, the grip of his fingers (incongruously lean for a man of his build—the diet actually was working) deceptively strong.

“Sherlock,” Mycroft said warningly. He looked Sherlock over from crown to toe. Something flickered over his face. “Ah. I see you haven’t heeded my advice from last time either.”

“Maybe because it’s still none of your business,” Sherlock retorted.

Mycroft pursed his lips. “I’m only trying to help. I… care about your well-being. And John’s.” He had the look of someone who’d just tasted something that disagreed with them.

“Then you’ll be pleased to know that we’re both doing fine.” Sherlock held his gaze over the file they both still held, staring his brother down in the way that made even the hardest officers of Scotland Yard feel uneasy. Mycroft merely raised an eyebrow and let go of the manila folder, and the sudden lack of counterbalancing force caused Sherlock to jerk it back into his own chest.

Sherlock flicked through the documents in the file— Moriarty’s movements, known associates, bought-off organizations, safe houses. There was a wealth of information here, of the kind that certain spy organizations would gladly kill for.

Mycroft snorted delicately. “How do you think we acquired it in the first place?”

Sherlock didn’t look up. “Is this how people feel when I do that?”

“I couldn’t begin to fathom.”

Sherlock flipped to another page. Bank accounts, revenue, figures. “You can leave now.”

Mycroft sighed. He reached out as though he might place a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. Sherlock pretended not to notice, but the slight, unavoidable twitch gave him away. Mycroft dropped his hand. When he spoke again, it was soft. Understanding in a way that made Sherlock’s skin itch. “The surveillance is in place. We’ll keep him out of harm’s way.”

Sherlock didn’t say anything, didn’t look up but did pause in the middle of turning the page. He listened to the receding sound of Mycroft’s new shoes (they changed the cadence of his step, ergo they pinched).

Mycroft hesitated by the door. “I do hope you know what you’re doing, brother.”

The door opened. It closed. The tap of Italian leather in the stairwell grew fainter—it skipped the step that squeaked. It went out the front door.

Sherlock set the folder down carefully and rested his head in his hands. Just for a second, just a solitary moment of weakness. “So do I.”

* * *

He didn’t tell John. Not about the video nor about Moriarty. If anyone had asked—they wouldn’t, but if they did—he would have said he was protecting John. Why should John have to fear that a madman was coming for him (again) because he was Sherlock’s?

Why should Moriarty get to own any of John’s fear at all? (Not good.)

All of his fear should be Sherlock’s  _ (Not good.) _

There was also the other reason, the one underneath all the other reasons: John would want to involve the police. John wasn’t above killing on Sherlock’s behalf, but on his own? Never. He would want Moriarty arrested, Moriarty given a fair trial, Moriarty still breathing and with all of his limbs attached.

And Sherlock would give quite a lot to have the opposite.

He would give John anything he asked for, he knew deep down it was so, and therein lay the problem. But John couldn’t ask for a thing he didn’t know existed. He wouldn’t ask Sherlock to halt his (dark, glorious, blood-soaked) plans if he didn’t know they were there.

So that settled it: John couldn’t know, and that was fine. It was all fine.

* * *

They didn’t do it again that Saturday or the one that followed. Whatever strange fear had gripped John for the last week (Fear that Sherlock would leave him due to boredom and lack of sexual satisfaction? Boring. Trivial. Ridiculous. Really, John.) it seemed to have passed. The easiness between them lingered. It made itself known through casual, affectionate touches—a hand in his hair while watching telly, a fond brush over his shoulder in passing, the way they curled together like a nautilus in sleep.

If John thought it was odd that they hadn’t taken a case in weeks, he kept it to himself. Still, Sherlock could feel his interest, could see it in the curious looks he gave as Sherlock furiously tapped away at his keyboard.

He’d found where Chrissy lived; it took all of ten minutes—it was amazing the sorts of information people gave away about themselves on the internet. He thought of Moriarty doing exactly this, finding her the same way. It was a dark and unpleasant imagining.

He asked John, finally. “It doesn’t bother you that we haven’t been on a case?”

John frowned. “Should it? The break’s been kind of nice, to tell you the truth. Getting the chance to catch up on the blog.”

Sherlock hummed, only half paying attention.

“I’m more surprised it hasn’t been bothering you. You’re the one nearly going out of your skin every time we don’t have something on.”

“Ah, well. Always research to be done.”

Sherlock smiled, and John gave him a suspicious “Hmm” and that was that.

Lestrade  _ had _ been texting—and then he’d been calling, and Sherlock had ignored every message. He sent them all straight to voicemail; he was good at ignoring people when need be. There was too much to do to bother with the Met’s trivial cases at a time like this.

It worked remarkably well, until there were heavy footfalls and a sturdy, insistent knock on the front door. He knew who it was at once, of course—knocking instead of simply ringing the bell, that was someone used to announcing himself at a wide variety of residences, where not all of them had a doorbell. Police. Lestrade, whose calls he had been avoiding.

Sherlock opened the door and began speaking before the detective inspector could even get a word out. “Email them to me. I’ll solve them electronically,” Sherlock said, and he shut the door in Lestrade’s face.

John frowned. “What was that about?”

“Nothing at all.” Sherlock smiled, perhaps too brightly under the circumstances.

There was another knock, and Sherlock kicked a foot backwards to impact the door. He heard a muttered “For crying out loud” before stepping away from the door entirely (best to divert John’s attention elsewhere).

There was that shrewd, skeptical look on John’s face again, and he looked as though he might say something—but whatever it was, he swallowed it with a shrug and let it drop. “You want anything from the store?”

“Pork shoulder, please.”

“To eat, or—?”

“John,” Sherlock said reprovingly. Really, John ought to know better by now.

John rolled his eyes. “Never mind, forget I asked. I don’t want to know.”

Sherlock swiped his keys. John was so gullible that he thought he’d misplaced them yet again, and Sherlock conveniently “found” them when he knew Lestrade would be safely in his car and well away from Baker Street. John left, but not before pressing a kiss to Sherlock’s mouth.

John knew something was afoot, but he didn’t know what just yet. He would start investigating, probably sooner rather than later. Sherlock took a few key pages out of the file from Mycroft and stowed them elsewhere.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHOOPS. This chapter is going up later in the day than usual because I had no idea it was Thursday. Sorry, y'all!

When they finally did do it again, the cuts on John’s arms had healed, leaving raw, pink lines in their absence. Sherlock couldn’t help but bring John’s arm delicately to his face. He cradled it as though he were holding something sacred (it was, wasn’t it?).

“You know, fetish didn’t always refer to sexual perversions,” Sherlock said conversationally. The history lesson was belied by the frank fervency as he nuzzled his cheek against the top of John’s arm. “A fetish used to be a religious object, an item of power in certain religions.”

“You don’t believe in religion,” John said, and Sherlock was pleased to find a slight tremor in his voice, especially when Sherlock used his tongue to trace slow, lazy patterns along the newly healed skin.

“No,” Sherlock agreed. “I don’t. And yet there’s a certain poetry there, is there not? The idea of infusing mundane objects with supernatural power, imbuing them with meaning.” He drummed his fingers against the side of the midazolam bottle pointedly, and his fingernails had grown just long enough to make a ghost of a _clink_ when they tapped the amber glass.

John’s eyes followed his fingers, and his tongue darted out to wet his lips. Sherlock wondered if John knew that he did that, sometimes. Decided he probably didn’t. John started unbuttoning his shirt, and Sherlock went through the steps he knew by rote. Fill the syringe, measure the dose, find a ~~vein~~ pad of soft skin that smells of John, disinfect, stick, plunge, ~~dispose of the evidence~~. He frowned. Well. That part had been the same until recently. Now—? Inconclusive. Further information needed.

Sherlock fell on John, fingers roaming, testing, prodding at planes of skin looking for a reaction, a hungry mouth seeking out its bedfellow. John let himself be pushed down onto the mattress, not fighting, not at all. His hands came up to grip the sides of Sherlock’s face, to change the angle of their mouths so tongues could work deeper, licking at the hot, soft flesh inside.

“Someone’s eager,” John said between gasps and kisses, and Sherlock didn’t answer, just sucked a deep bruise into the side of his neck. “Oh fuck,” John groaned. He tried to move away when Sherlock used his teeth and tipped the pleasure-pain of it firmly over into _pain,_ but his hand was tangled in Sherlock’s hair pulling him closer even as he tried to scoot himself back across the bed. The effect was uncoordinated and utterly endearing.

“I want you,” Sherlock mouthed into his skin. “Want you so much.”

“You have me,” John said, and he hadn’t let go of his grip on Sherlock’s hair yet.

Sherlock reached above and around him to pull the restraints from beneath the bed. He was rewarded by the look of surprise on John’s face. “You don’t remember,” he said.

“No.” John’s fingers relinquished their grip on his curls as Sherlock secured first his hands and then his feet.

He narrated this part, mostly for John’s benefit. Because he liked it. “Look at you all spread out for me,” Sherlock said, and he let his voice drop into its lower register, until it was rumbling and menacing, and that was something John liked too. He could see it in the light flush that crept up his chest, could hear it in the increased pace of respiration. He didn’t touch; he just looked.

John’s legs were pulled wide apart, and Sherlock crouched at the foot of the bed to nestle between them. He looked. John smelled like musk and sweat, and he let the little puffs of his breath tickle long John’s sensitive inner thighs. The light dusting of hair there moved, disturbed by his exhalations. John’s leg gave a little twitch, but Sherlock had tied him tight. He wouldn’t be going anywhere tonight.

“What are you doing?” John asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Sherlock asked. He blew a soft, steady breath at the juncture of John’s thighs and was rewarded with a small moan that went straight to his groin. “I’m observing you.”

“Yes, but why?”

Sherlock stood up and grinned. “Because you like it.”

“I don’t,” John said. “It’s bloody embarrassing. Can you not—”

Sherlock hummed. “You do find it embarrassing. But that doesn’t mean you don’t like it.” He raked his eyes down John’s chest, down, down to where his cock was taking a definite interest in the proceedings. It was flushed and erect, with a sheen of fluid beading at its tip.

“I _don’t,_ I mean that. Cut it out, it’s getting weird.”

“I think I’d rather not,” Sherlock said.

John gritted his teeth. No matter what Sherlock said, John wasn’t entirely wrong… he just wasn’t entirely right either. John _did_ get off on this, but by the looks of him, he didn’t much like it either.

“I said you could mark me. Why don’t you do that again—cut me, like last time?”

“Because someone I once cared about was tied down just like this, vivisected, and cut into very small pieces, and I was made to watch. Because I can’t stomach seeing the same become of you, not right now.” Sherlock felt the corner of his lip twitch upward in a derisive smile. “Weakness, I know.”

He was perhaps beginning to see some of the appeal people found in confession.

John struggled against his bonds, struggled to sit up, although admittedly in vain. His wonderfully expressive face knit together in concern. “Sherlock, what? Oh my god, are you alright?”

Sherlock shook his head. Only John would be concerned about his well-being in this position—concerned about him, and not what Sherlock might do to him.

“You’re not going to ask if I liked it? Watching?”

“What? Of course not. Why would you even—”

He didn’t want to hear the end of that thought. He interrupted instead. “Tonight I want to test your limits.”

John laughed, a short, sharp bark of a thing. “And filleting me like a fish doesn’t do that?”

“No. For someone else it might. Not for you. You’re not afraid of pain.” He stopped himself, imprecise. “Physical pain. You’re afraid of weakness, of being measured and found wanting. That’s why you do this, isn’t it?” A smile flickered over his face, a pale ghost of a thing. “You think I might leave you if you don’t.”

John pulled at his tethers again. Rolled his eyes, huffed. “I do this to make you _happy,_ you arse. Although right about now I’m questioning whether that’s the best idea.”

“It’s not,” Sherlock said in all seriousness. “And yet here we are, and you didn’t want a safeword, so I’m not letting you go.”

Sherlock grabbed something from the nightstand drawer, something John didn’t know was in there. He palmed it using sleight of hand, and in all their bickering banter, John didn’t see it happen. He crawled back down John’s body (prone, so delightfully helpless) and gave his cock a long, lazy lick from root to tip. John jerked, his hips bucking just slightly off the bed.

“Do you forgive me?” Sherlock asked. He was playing, John knew he was playing. John played along.

“If you keep doing that, I might,” he said, cocking his eyebrow in a way that still managed to be dashing in spite of everything.

Sherlock hummed a noncommittal response. He teased, licking without purpose, in a way he knew from experience wouldn’t bring anything approximating release. He kept it up for longer than was polite, until John was making frustrated little growls and flexing his fingers unconsciously.

“You wish you could grab me, shove your prick down my throat. You wish you could make me stop, make me do what you want.”

“Damn right, I do.”

“Hmm. What else would you do to me, if you could?”

“I’d tie you down, just like this. I’d— _ah_ —I’d fuck you rough and hard, until you were stuffed so full of me you couldn’t breathe. I—” whatever was coming next in that delightfully pornographic monologue, Sherlock missed it, because he chose that moment to roll the cock ring he was holding down over John’s erection, chasing it with a hot, wet mouth.

Sherlock sucked him quick and sloppy, slitting his eyes so he could ride the sounds of John’s bellowing moans. He used his hand, applying the right amount of pressure to get John _right there_ — he could feel his thighs tense where they were starting to become damp with perspiration—and then he pulled off abruptly.

John swore a blue streak, and oh, that was satisfying too. _“Sherlock,”_ he accused. He lifted his head to glare at Sherlock, who was smiling innocently at him. Sherlock saw the moment he realized he was now wearing a cock ring. “When did you—?”

“While you were distracted,” Sherlock grinned.

John thumped his head back against the mattress. “Goddammit.”

Sherlock wanted to wait until John was sufficiently cooled down, until his arousal had abated, before starting again. He took the opportunity to indulge his new favorite pastime: drinking in John Watson. He traced his fingers over all of John’s scars, starting with the most recent ones they’d made together.

“39 millimeter round from an assault rifle, Soviet-made, most likely. The man who shot you had shaky aim.” Sherlock said as he ghosted his fingers over the gnarled mass of scar tissue on John’s shoulder. He touched another near the outside of John’s elbow. “Burned yourself on the fryer at a chip shop, after school job when you were young.” He moved to an old scar, a thin, jagged white line that spilled over John’s collarbone. The years had faded it, stretched it. “Your father,” Sherlock pronounced softly. “A bottle.”

John closed his eyes. “Sherlock. Don’t.”

He was gripped by the perverse urge to push, just because he could. “He was drunk. You were— trying to pick him up off the floor? Defending your sister? Your mother, maybe.”

John turned his face away, putting as much distance between Sherlock and himself as he could, under the circumstances. Sherlock glanced down. John’s erection had flagged at the mention of traumatic childhood memories. Still, the cock ring had done its job, so that not all of the blood could flee back to parts more northern.

“Arousal is as much biological as mental, you know,” Sherlock said, taking John’s half-hard prick in hand once more. He pumped the shaft slowly, using a thumb to spread a glistening bead of preejaculate around the tip. “You don’t like me very much right now. You’re angry with me.” He bent his head to taste, pulling the swollen head into his mouth and sucking lightly, chasing the salty-bitterness there. John moaned despite himself, and Sherlock pulled off. “And yet.”

Sherlock licked him like an apology, pressing kisses to his damp flesh and coaxing more sweet, broken moans out of him. He didn’t stop until he’d chased the dour frown off John’s face, until he’d replaced it with something confused and wanting.

When he stopped this time, he looked up to find John staring at him, naked hunger on his face.

“Do you forgive me?” Sherlock asked, and it was less playful this time. He was genuinely curious. He wanted to know.

John didn’t answer the question. He licked his lips, a pink flash of tongue. “Keep going,” he said.

He started again, and then again. Each time it took less and less time to bring John to the brink. When he pulled off the last time, John was sweating, straining against the straps so that Sherlock could see the lines of his muscles in vivid relief. He traced one with his tongue to taste the salt there. The simple action drew another moan from John, loud and long.

“You’re so sensitive like this,” Sherlock said, shaping his hands around John’s pectoralis major, his sides, flank, hips. “Every nerve ending standing at attention, screaming for relief.” He bent to blow on John’s cock, now blood-dark and shiny with engorgement.

“Aaagh,” John choked. His erection bobbed as his whole body twitched and shuddered. “Christ, Sherlock, _please._ Fuck me. Give me something.”

“I don’t think so,” Sherlock said. “Fucking is beside the point.” But he slicked his fingers and worked one into John, who relaxed into it like a drowning man. He added a second finger, and it slipped in without resistance. “Good?” He asked John, making sure to rub the bundle of nerves inside him on every stroke. John didn’t answer. He groaned out his pleasure, loud and abandoned. His face was screwed up in concentration as he chased the orgasm Sherlock didn’t intend on letting him have.

He whimpered when Sherlock stilled his fingers. Sherlock could feel John’s muscles clenching around his fingers where they were still seated in him, now harmless and immobile.

“Move, damn you.” John panted.

“In due time.”

When John had settled, Sherlock started to move his fingers again, a slow, insistent drag.

“Don’t stop,” John begged. “Don’tstopdon’tstopdon’tstop.”

“You know I probably will, don’t you?”

“You can’t,” John choked out. “Christ, you’re going to kill me. Fuck, just please—”

“You want to come?” Sherlock asked.

_“Yes.”_

“Are you sure?”

 _“Yes,_ of course I’m sure. God.”

He’d known the answer already, of course he had. He also knew John wouldn’t like what was coming nearly as much as he thought he would. He rolled the cock ring up and off John’s erection, and John hissed at the contact. He was so sensitive he was about to go off at the slightest provocation. Sherlock pistoned his fingers in and out of John’s clenching hole, enjoying the way it made him twist against the straps that held him.

John came untouched, arching off the bed in a beautiful line. It was poetry. It made Sherlock’s mouth go dry. He slowed his fingers but kept up their movement, coaxing John through his orgasm. He kept going long after he’d ordinarily have stopped, when the touch ceased to be pleasurable and began to bleed over into discomfort.

John winced. “Okay, Sherlock, you can stop now.”

“Mm.”

He didn’t. He dragged his fingers mercilessly across John’s prostate, making him twitch and writhe. He wrapped his mouth around John’s flaccid penis, luxuriating in the silken texture of it. John’s voice took on a new, different urgency as he swore. “Fuck, stop. That doesn’t feel good, ahhh—”

Sherlock ignored him, mouthing at the soft skin, swallowing around it in a way he usually couldn’t.

“Could you go again, do you think?” He pulled off to ask.

 _“No,_ stop.”

He was wrong, and Sherlock was patient. He kept his fingers moving, relentless and steady as the tide, and he coaxed John back to hardness.

 _“Stop,”_ John gasped. “Oh my god, stop. Stop, I can’t.”

He brought John to the precipice again, and then he held him there, teetering on the edge. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No. I don’t know.”

He helped John through it. He reached down and took John’s red, weeping cock in hand. John was drowning alive, shuddering with great, heaving breaths. One, two hard pumps, and he was spilling into Sherlock’s hand and shouting. Sherlock kept going, not letting up, stroking John’s cock as he went soft and twitched. His cries took on a new tone, breathy and broken.

“Gorgeous,” Sherlock breathed, watching with clear, calculating eyes as John’s face did the most complicated things.

“Please,” John said again.

“Please what?” Sherlock asked, interested. “Please stop? Don’t stop?” He licked the shell of John’s ear. “You know it doesn’t matter, but I want to hear you say it.”

“I don’t know,” John sobbed. “Oh god, I don’t know. Please.”

Sherlock kept going, running his hands over John’s soft prick, the velvet of his balls, his thighs. He knelt and took him into his mouth again, running his tongue over the soft member, occasionally scraping with his teeth. He sucked the spongy glans, hollowing his cheeks around it, and John jerked and yelled. His hands jerked with the desire to protect himself, to push Sherlock away. He kept going, sucking John until he was half hard again, until his cries grew soft and confused, until he jerked a third startled orgasm from him.

“No more, please. Mercy.” His eyes were closed, and he was still and quiet.

Sherlock’s cock twitched at the sight of his lover laid out, spent and begging. “Alright,” he said, pressing a final kiss to John’s temple. He gave a last, long look at him before rising to get a damp flannel from the bathroom. He cleaned John up, running the flannel over his belly, his thighs, between his legs. John twitched when the cloth brushed his oversensitized penis, but Sherlock didn’t linger.

When he looked up, John was looking at him. “If I said I wanted to remember this, what would you say?”

Sherlock felt the corner of his mouth quirking up. “I’d ask if you wanted to remember it as a pleasant memory or a cautionary tale.”

“And I’d tell you I’m not sure which.”

Sherlock turned away, busying himself folding the flannel that was destined for the wash, that did not need to be folded. Even tied to a bed, John wasn’t about to let him get away with that.

“Sherlock,” he said in that voice that compelled Sherlock to look. “I want to remember this.”

Sherlock sighed. “It doesn’t matter what I say. You won’t, anyway. Biology over mental states, remember?”

“But you could tell me,” John said.

“And yet I made you a promise, so I won’t.”

Sherlock could see the moment John found the next logical thought. “How many times have we had this conversation before?”

“A few,” Sherlock admitted.

“Doesn’t that… I don’t know, bother you?”

Sherlock shrugged. “What’s the sense in being bothered by it? Sometimes you ask, and I tell you no.” He threaded his fingers through John’s, to give him something to touch. “It works. It’s fine.”

He left John tied up when he left the room. He couldn’t have honestly said whether it was an act of cruelty or care. He was glad no one was there to ask. John had learned a trick of writing notes to himself once, and he might again. He didn’t know if John would thank him for the knowledge in the morning, or if he’d be blamed—best to prevent it entirely.

Sherlock could hear him yelling from down the hall. He put on music, and he turned it up loud.

He did not sleep.


	13. Chapter 13

John woke up feeling sore all over, and the _type_ of soreness might have made him blush, had it not felt like blushing would set off a new wave of agony in some yet-undiscovered part of his body. His arms felt wrenched, and there was a stiffness in his hips that reminded him of the days when he still used a cane. When he rolled upright to get out of bed, he regretted it as soon as his arse touched down, and he winced when he took a piss.

“Jesus, you really did a number on me last night,” he said by way of greeting.

Sherlock froze. It reminded John of the animals on those documentary channels, the ones that went stock-still when a predator sighted them in the tall grass. Sherlock blinked once, twice, then seemed to come unstuck all at once, coming back to life as he ran his eyes over John’s face, searching for something. “Sorry?” he tried.

John shrugged. “Just an observation. Wasn’t really looking for an apology.”

“Oh. Well, good.” He looked John over. It was half past ten, and the morning was almost gone. John had slept longer than usual. He normally did after one of _those_ nights. But it was Sunday, and Sunday morning was as good a time as any to be a little lazy.

“Might want to get dressed,” Sherlock said, as though he’d heard John’s thoughts and was saying so just to spite him.

John looked down at his clothes. He was still in a t-shirt and pants, the ones he’d presumably slept in, or at least the ones he’d awoken wearing. The clinic hadn’t needed his help for the better part of the month, and their detective business had been so slow that he’d gotten into the habit of staying undressed. Taking after Sherlock, really, since the other man had hardly been out of his dressing gown and pyjamas in a week.

Not so today, though. Sherlock was dressed in a pressed suit and a crisp white shirt. He had his coat on and looked ready to step out the door any minute.

“Got a case on, then?” John asked. He found a pot of coffee in the kitchen. Cold, but it was better than nothing. He didn’t fancy taking on the day with the dull ache of a headache brewing in the back of his skull and no caffeine to speak of.

“Indeed. Lestrade’s finally turned up something useful.”

John considered lingering over coffee, heating it in the microwave and taking his time just to see if Sherlock would let him—he was often more solicitous on Sunday mornings—but the truth was that Sherlock wasn’t the only one who went a bit batty without a case. The rest had been nice, for what it was, but John was ready to get back to business as usual. It was with that in mind that he drained his coffee in a few gulps, set the chipped mug in the sink, and headed back to the bedroom to put clothes on. It wasn’t more than ten minutes later that he was dressed and ready to go with a last pat at the gun in his waistband and the phone in his pocket to make sure both were still there.

* * *

They were in the cab, and Sherlock was tapping away at his phone. The message notification chimed, and he frowned and typed an even more furious response, fingers flying over the keypad. John watched him idly, eventually losing interest and turning his attention to the scenery going by out the window. Sherlock had been secretive lately.

On a day-to-day basis, Sherlock was usually too much in his own head to bother to explain things to John, to tell him where he was going or what exactly he was working on. He lead and John followed, and that was the way it had always been—John was fine with that. What he wasn’t fine with was the way Sherlock had suddenly begun deliberately keeping things from him.

It was the way Sherlock pored through papers that were gone as soon as he was done with them. Not that John had gone looking. Okay, he’d gone looking, but only after noticing things just… disappearing from the flat in a way they usually didn’t. Usually Sherlock’s notes covered every available surface even when John wished they wouldn’t. It was the way Sherlock had begun working on his computer only after he thought John had gone to bed, and it had all started after the visit from Mycroft. He thought John didn’t notice, for some reason persisted in believing that John didn’t _know_ him after all this time and all they’d done.

John was pulled out of his reverie by an insistent nudging. He looked back at Sherlock—Sherlock who was still frowning and muttering while sending rapid-fire text messages, but was now doing it one-handed while holding a wrapped granola bar out to John. The nudging was him pushing it into John’s arm.

“Crunchy oat bran?” John asked, but he took it.

Sherlock didn’t look up. “Your body’s been under stress. You should eat something.”

“Thanks,” John said. “Do you… want to tell me what kind of stress?”

The only answer came from the cabbie. “No eating in the car,” he said.

* * *

As it turned out, Sherlock was right. He did feel better after he’d finished the granola bar, but by the time the afternoon rolled around, John was fading fast. One oat bar and the meager bit of coffee from earlier didn’t give him much to go on, and the headache that had been threatening to rear its ugly head had finally showed up, with no signs of leaving anytime soon. It made him snappish.

“Are you okay?” Sally asked, somehow managing to make a simple question of concern sound sarcastic. They were both standing outside Lestrade’s office. He was waiting for Sherlock, and she was presumably waiting to talk to her boss. Or rubbernecking his misery. It was a toss up at this point.

“Fine,” John said with a little too much force.

Sally blinked. “Right, well you look like shit. See if I ever bring you coffee again.” She muttered that last bit, and John realized belatedly that she was holding two paper cups. Despite her words, she held one of them out to him anyway, and John took it with a sigh.

“Sorry. I— sorry. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Uh-huh. Fancy that, living with a psychopath making it hard to sleep. Does he keep you up all night doing creepy experiments?”

That was uncomfortably on the nose. John opened his mouth to defend Sherlock but didn’t get the chance. The door to Lestrade’s office banged open, and the man himself strode out in a flurry of swirling coattails and drama. “Come on, John. We’re leaving.”

“You’re wrong,” he told Sally, but he did take the coffee.

He followed Sherlock as he strode out of the Met headquarters, biting his tongue until they were safely outside and out of earshot. He might have had something to say about the way Sherlock barged out of Lestrade’s office, perhaps about the way he ought to at least _pretend_ to be polite if he didn’t want another dry spell of cases, but he wasn’t about to give Sally the satisfaction. He was about to ask Sherlock where they were going—they were on the wrong side of the street to hail a cab back to Baker Street—but Sherlock opened his mouth first.

“Good of you to defend me,” the detective said, and his lips curled into a fond smile.

“What?” John asked, momentarily flummoxed. “But I didn’t.”

“Maybe not technically, but you were going to.”

A grin broke out on John’s face. “Are you trying to tell me ‘it’s the thought that counts’?”

Sherlock looked uncomfortable at being caught out in a moment of sentiment. He cleared his throat. “It’s not necessary of course, but, well. I find that—”

“You’re welcome.”

Sherlock’s eyes crinkled. “Quite.”

Sherlock thanked him (kind of), and that was… well, it was nice, wasn’t it? His good mood lasted the exact length of time it took to hail a taxi. It seemed John’s current lot in life was to be scolded by all the cab drivers in London.

“Oy, you’re not bringing that in here, are you?”

John just barely managed to avoid rolling his eyes—Sherlock was perhaps rubbing off on him a bit too much. Still, he didn’t argue. He drained the cup of coffee in a few gulps. Scotland Yard’s coffee was terrible, but it was hot and bracing. He threw the crumpled paper cup into a nearby bin and slid into the seat beside Sherlock.

“So. Where’re we going?”

The _where_ of it turned out to be in Harrow, all the way at the edge of London. They went much farther than they typically did by cab. The parts of the city that were familiar to John faded out and gave way to storefronts and homes he’d never seen before, whole neighborhoods where he’d never been. The area began to look more ramshackle and suburban the farther out they got.

“Christ,” John said, catching sight of the cab fare ticker.

Sherlock flashed an unfamiliar credit card in answer, his eyes glued on something out the window.

“Did you nick that?”

“Expense account,” Sherlock replied.

John nodded and felt a pang of gratitude toward Lestrade. Sherlock still wouldn’t accept payment for their services, but clearly Greg had found something he _would_ accept. John’s bank account would certainly be the better for it, considering how often Sherlock left him to pick up the tab. “And we’re looking for…?”

“Evidence of a drug ring, most interesting thing that’s happened in weeks. Turns out one of the higher ups likes to get away from the city every now and then, and I thought we could pay his vacation home a visit.”

They arrived, and John whistled at the total cost of the fare. “Nice to work for the Met sometimes, innit?”

But he said it to himself because Sherlock was already gone, possessed with the laser focus that came with a case to solve. He neatly swung himself over the low fence surrounding one of the houses behind them while John was still paying the driver. John shoved his hands in his pocket and followed, having only slightly more difficulty with the fence than Sherlock. The house was white, or maybe had been, once upon a time. It was yellowed with age, and its windows looked like they’d seen better days. There was a white lattice of security bars over them. For a vacation home, it really wasn’t much to speak of.

Sherlock squeezed around the thin strip of grass that led round the house to the back, and John jogged to catch up.

“I take it we’re not here on official police business, then?” John asked as Sherlock worked the door open with a set of lock picks procured from somewhere in that coat of his.

“Depends on your definition,” Sherlock said as he swung the door wide. He turned and shot a grin at John. “It’ll be official police business once we turn up some evidence for them.”

He could protest, could say, ‘That’s illegal. Let’s call Lestrade.’ But well, what would really be the point? Instead he said, “Right, what are we looking for?” and was rewarded with another grin.

“Evidence of Rick Marsters’ involvement with the drug trade. Product—drugs packaged for sale to local dealers, most likely. You won’t find paraphernalia here.” Sherlock sniffed. “He’s not a user.”

John thought about asking how he knew, if he knew Marsters from another life— _from when you were an addict_ —but he bit his tongue. It wasn’t his business. He knew from experience how unenjoyable it was for people to go poking at old wounds. Unfortunately for him, Sherlock still did an excellent impression of a mind-reader.

“He wasn’t my dealer,” Sherlock said quietly.

“I know. I mean—I don’t know, but I don’t need to. I wouldn’t have asked.”

Sherlock shrugged. He went to search the office, and John thought better of going after him. He checked the bedroom instead. It was surprisingly opulent, given the exterior of the house. John wasn’t any kind of expert in these things—Sherlock could probably have told him the thread count of the sheets at a glance—but even he could see that everything here was expensive.

He searched the nightstand and found nothing out of the ordinary. Books, reading glasses, hand lotion, tissues. The bathroom was similarly well-appointed and stocked with bath products that looked like they cost more than his rent, but there were no drugs to speak of. He even checked behind the toilet and in the tank, places he knew Harry had hidden her pot in high school.

Once he was sure he’d checked every conceivable hiding spot, he went to find Sherlock. Sherlock who was standing in the middle of Marsters’ home office stock still, with his fingers tented below his chin. His eyes were lightly closed, and he opened them when he heard John approach.

Sherlock’s gaze turned sharp as he fixed John with a critical eye. “Are you alright? Feeling dizzy, nauseous, tired?”

“I’m fine,” John said, feeling suddenly self-conscious. It was better coming from Sherlock than Sally—Sherlock at least had a right to ask, but still, he didn’t like being treated like an invalid. Never had. “Stood up too fast, that’s all.”

“Hm,” was all Sherlock said. John held himself rigidly upright after that, conscious of his posture, standing straight and tall enough that his wellness should be beyond reproach. He was aware of Sherlock’s eyes on him, cataloging him for symptoms of illness, probably.

Sherlock crouched to inspect the baseboards beneath a desk, trailing his finger along the ridge and holding it up to inspect the dust. John couldn’t help make a face when Sherlock touched his fingertip to his tongue and tasted it. “Talc,” he said. “No children in this house; no need for talcum power—are you feeling confused?”

“Sorry, what?” John’s brain stuttered over the sudden change in tack, the conversational equivalent of whiplash that he always got whenever Sherlock abruptly changed the subject, like he forgot that ordinary people didn’t process things the way he did—didn’t _think_ the way he did.

“Are you confused?” Sherlock repeated, now crawling beneath the desk to pry at an innocuous-looking electrical outlet. “Lethargy, confusion, memory loss: all common side effects of long-term benzodiazepine use. You’ve been shaky on your feet all day. You have a headache, although you’re trying to hide it. John, give me your keys.”

“Where’s your keys, then?” John grumbled, but passed them under the table anyway.

“Forgot them,” Sherlock said without a hint of remorse. “So, confusion?”

“No,” John said, starting to feel tetchy.

Sherlock set about removing the plate from the wall socket, using one of John’s keys as a makeshift screwdriver. It wasn’t going particularly well. Sherlock muttered under his breath as he turned the screws incrementally. John watched for a little while, shaking his head.

“Sherlock, don’t you think Marsters probably has a screwdriver round here somewhere?”

More muttering. No reply.

John sighed and wandered into the kitchen to rifle through the drawers. It was the spitting image of his mum’s kitchen back home, he realized. What were the odds? Must’ve been designed by the same architect. The coincidence brought a smile to John’s face, and he hummed as he checked the drawer that served as the catch-all for odds and ends though his childhood. Silly to think it’d be the same in this house, but he was seized by a sudden fit of nostalgia. He did have to start somewhere, after all.

He was not a squeamish man, couldn’t be, after living with Sherlock for so long, but even so he yelped as the drawer slid open and the smell hit him. “Sherlock!”

He breathed through his mouth, and fought down the impulse to gag.

John heard Sherlock before he saw him, pounding footsteps as he came running. “What? What is it?”

“A severed hand.”

John stepped aside so Sherlock could look, feeling green around the gills. It was a woman’s hand, hacked off with something blunt and serrated. There was a jagged piece of bone protruding from the wrist. It was the grey of rotting meat, and its fingers were grotesquely curled around a piece of paper. Sherlock pulled a glove out of his pocket and snapped it on before reaching down to pluck the paper free.

Sherlock went paper-white when he saw it, and he looked about exactly how John felt. In his partner’s gloved hand was a photo of _him._ And not just any photo, it was a picture taken recently, right on the steps of 221b. He could see the plasters on his arms where he’d hiked his jumper up to scratch at the itching, healing skin. A cold chill ran down his spine. He wasn’t looking at the camera. How could he be? He had no idea anyone was watching.

If Sherlock wasn’t going to say it, he would. “That’s me,” he said, temporarily ignoring Sherlock’s disdain for people stating the obvious. “That is _a photo of me.”_

Sherlock didn’t reply. He threw the photo back onto the table and removed the glove. He sat down heavily on the nearest elevated flat surface that would bear his weight, which happened to be a dining chair, and retreated into his mind palace.

Which John was not having right now.

“Sherlock? _Sherlock.”_ This was crackers. He wanted acknowledgment that this was crackers. “Why is there a photo of me in a dead woman’s hand?”

He had no desire to wait here while Sherlock did… whatever he did. He wanted answers, wanted something to fight.

“Sod this,” he muttered and headed back to the rear door, to the way they’d come in. He needed some air. He needed to punch something.

“Wait.” Sherlock said, and God help him, John did. He stopped in his tracks, waiting. “We’re leaving, but don’t go outside just yet.” Sherlock blew out a breath, and his voice sounded shaky. “Don’t touch anything. Just, give me a moment.”

Sherlock back in control—Sherlock with a plan—settled John. If Sherlock knew what they were doing, it was fine. He remembered the scent of chlorine and Semtex. He pushed the thought back down and stood a little straighter.

“But the case,” John said. He didn’t even know why he said it. There was a photo of him in a dead woman’s hand, in a kitchen that looked just like his mum’s. Clearly discretion was the better part of valor in this scenario. But he’d never known Sherlock to willingly abandon a case, and that was somehow the most alarming part of this whole endeavor.

If this was more important than the case, then things were not fine. Then things were very bad indeed, and the sinking feeling in John’s gut was telling him something true.

Sherlock was ignoring him again. He pressed a button on his phone and held it to his ear. “127 Augustine Road, Harrow,” he said, voice clipped and precise. There was a pause, then a soft, begrudging. “Thank you.”

Then Sherlock was standing very close to him, and he was being ushered into a black town car, the hand and the talcum powder both forgotten.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to call your attention to the fact that this fic now has a projected end chapter! 🎉 Which is not to say that the ending is actually _finished_ because it isn't, but well, I know where I'm landing this metaphorical plane now 😁

Sherlock cast around for snipers, watchers, anything out of the ordinary on the way to the car. There was nothing. It was a sleepy neighborhood in the suburbs, and besides the hand they’d found in the drawer (and the cocaine that was surely hidden behind the face of that electrical socket—he’d send Lestrade to make the relevant arrests later, no need to see it for himself), there was nothing of note.

Moriarty didn’t mean to take John. Not yet, at least. It was a message. For now, he intended to frighten them.

Sherlock slid into the seat after John. “My people have swept the area,” Mycroft said, doubtless noting Sherlock’s roving eyes.

“You’ll notice the lack of video cameras,” Sherlock said.

“Indeed. Careless of you to get drawn out here, isn’t it?” Sherlock felt the muscle in his jaw twitch before he forced himself to relax, to suppress the urge to grit his teeth against the barb. His brother’s sharp eyes raked over John, and when his gaze snapped back, Sherlock met it, defiant. “Oh, Sherlock. You didn’t.”

“I believe that is still none of your business.”

Mycroft leaned forward, and the usual effect was quite diminished without the umbrella. “But you’ve made it my business, haven’t you, little brother? Why should I go through the trouble of protecting your toys when you’re determined to break them?”

And now Sherlock really did grit his teeth in earnest, and he had no reservations about letting his brother see his irritation.

“Sorry, hello. Still in the car, thanks,” John cut in.

“You still haven’t told him,” Mycroft said, and it wasn’t a question.

Sherlock didn’t take his eyes off Mycroft, so he saw the slick smile spread itself over his brother’s face. It was the same smile he saw when Mycroft checkmated him, when Mycroft pointed out a faulty deduction, when Mycroft took away the medical supplies he’d bought with his own pocket money following the disappearance of a neighborhood cat.

“Don’t,” Sherlock said, but it was a token protestation. He didn’t imagine he’d be able to dissuade Mycroft now.

“Doctor Watson, are you familiar with the diagnostic criteria for sociopathy?”

“Lack of empathy, recklessness, impulsivity, inclination toward animal abuse in childhood escalating over time. Not really my area, but I’ve done the reading.” John squared his shoulders the way he did meeting fellow members of the armed forces, still the soldier through and through.

“Then you’re aware of the severity of my brother’s diagnosis.”

“Your brother’s not a sociopath,” John said, still stubbornly loyal.

“Oh, he very much is. Do you know you’re not the first person he’s tried this on?”

Sherlock closed his eyes. There was nothing he could do to prevent this, but he very much didn’t want to see the look on John’s face when he found out, again. He was concerned for Sherlock last time, but that was under the influence of a powerful anxiolytic in the privacy of their own flat. He did not want to see John’s reaction to the extent of Sherlock’s lies of omission.

“Oh?” John said, keeping his voice carefully neutral.

“It wasn’t like that,” Sherlock said softly. He opened his eyes and looked at John—only at John. He ignored Mycroft, pretended he wasn’t there. Insignificant data. If he was going to be forced to divulge this particular aspect of his history, he would do it himself. “She was a friend. My only friend. We were children. I—scared her.”

“Precision of language, Sherlock.”

Sherlock closed his eyes again. “I cut her. Incision to the right anterior tibialis. I never saw her again.”

He felt pressure against his cheek, a warm palm, and Sherlock opened his eyes onto John’s. They were kind and serious. “Did you mean to hurt her?”

Sherlock’s brow furrowed. “What?” No one had asked him that before. Perhaps that was why he was so stunned that he asked for clarification of a question he had certainly heard.

“Did you mean to hurt her?” John asked again, earnest. He was ignoring Mycroft too, and for that moment, it felt as though it were just the two of them in the car.

“No,” Sherlock said.

“Of course you didn’t. You were a child.”

There was a the loud sound of a throat being cleared, and Mycroft cut in, voice like chilled cream, smooth and cold. “Most children do not cut up their playmates.”

John lowered his hand and found Sherlock’s. He slotted their fingers together and squeezed. “Sherlock’s not like  _ most people, _ but that doesn’t make him a sociopath. It makes him brilliant.” He glared stubbornly at Mycroft, mouth set into a hard line. “You’re the reason he’s so afraid, aren’t you? The reason he acts like he’s some kind of monster.”

Mycroft didn’t say anything, but he looked away first. His eyes shifted to the window, to watch the shape of London as it rolled by. Except his ring finger kept tapping against his leg, so he wasn’t really seeing, he was thinking. When he spoke again, he was no longer on the attack. He sounded thoughtful. “And yet thanks to Sherlock’s interest in the girl, she’s been murdered by James Moriarty.”

John’s eyebrows snapped together. “What? Why? Sherlock said he hadn’t seen her since they were kids.” He looked at Sherlock for confirmation, and Sherlock nodded. “So why—?”

Mycroft sighed. “You should tell him, brother mine. Or I really will, this time.”

There was no avoiding it. “To get my attention,” Sherlock said quietly.

“But how would that work? You didn’t even know until—” Sherlock watched the play of emotions on John’s expressive face, saw the exact moment he realized. “You knew,” he said. “You knew he’d killed her.”

“He sent me a disk. A video.”

“All the research you’ve been doing, the reason we haven’t been taking cases from Lestrade.” A second realization hit, and Sherlock had the misfortune of watching that one, too. “You haven’t told Lestrade,” John said, and the incredulous disappointment in his voice stung more than Sherlock thought it would. “Why?” he asked again.

Mycroft saved him the indignity of having to answer that question, and Sherlock didn’t know if he hated or loved Mycroft for the small kindness. “My brother wanted to apprehend Moriarty on his own.”

“To kill him.”  _ Very good, John. An accurate assessment, if incomplete. _

Sherlock didn’t volunteer the fact that he was planning to do much more to Moriarty than kill him, and Mycroft saw fit to remain silent on that account.

John was quiet for long minutes that seemed to stretch out into eternity. Sherlock looked out the window to wait, watching the London he loved pass by. It was cold comfort, but it was a comfort still. He counted the number of people nursing their own private heartaches—a woman rubbing at a newly-bare ring finger, a couple looking carefully away from one another as they walked their dog. So many of them all butting against each other in one place—it was fascinating.

At last John spoke. “I don’t care,” he said. “It’s fine.”

Sherlock looked at him, surprised. Everything he knew about John told him he  _ would _ care.  _ Although he did shoot a cabbie for you, _ his mind helpfully supplied.

Mycroft raised one perfectly arched eyebrow. “Then why the chemical assistance, doctor? Are illegal pharmaceuticals that much better than having to face what he really is?”

A muscle in John’s jaw twitched. “I’m an army doctor with PTSD and an illegal handgun. Do you  _ really _ think I have a problem with drugs?” Sherlock and Mycroft both looked at him pointedly. “With drugs that don’t hurt Sherlock,” he clarified. He narrowed his eyes at Mycroft and shoved up the sleeve of his sweater.

“John,” Sherlock said, in warning.  _ Just let it go. _

John ignored him, holding out his arm with its neat rows of faint pink scars. “He gave me these with a scalpel on our living room floor,” he said, tilting his head in Sherlock’s direction. “I remember every cut. Do you want to hear about what we did with the blood after?”

Mycroft blanched, and Sherlock felt his own mouth twitch up as he fought down the urge to grin.

His brother recovered quickly. “No, that won’t be necessary.” He looked between the two of them and shook his head. “Perhaps the two of you deserve each other.”

“We do,” John said, putting a possessive hand on Sherlock’s knee. The gesture combined with the display preceding it was overdone, perhaps, but it filled Sherlock with a profound sense of gratitude.

The rest of the ride to Baker Street was mercifully short, and they passed it in stilted silence and mostly without looking at one another, but John kept his hand on Sherlock’s knee. When they arrived in front of the flat, John exited the car with a terse nod. “Mycroft.”

“Farewell, Doctor Watson.”

“Sherlock,” Mycroft stopped him with a soft word as he was climbing out of the car after John. He swallowed, and Sherlock watched as John climbed the steps to the front door. “I may have been… hasty.”

He turned back to Mycroft. “You mean you were wrong.”

“Now let’s not get carried away.” Mycroft said primly. He hesitated. “You have found something improbable, against all odds. Have a care with it.”

Sherlock studied his face, looking for derision, for mockery. He found none. He was startled to find that Mycroft looked tired and older than he remembered.

“I’m trying,” Sherlock said, and it was the honest truth.

He slammed the door without a second glance in his brother’s direction and followed John— John who’d gotten enough of a head start that Sherlock was climbing the steps of 221b to the sound of the upstairs door banging open hard enough to rattle the walls. Mrs. Hudson was out at her weekly bridge game, or else she would have poked her head out to see what was the matter.

The united front and composure John had felt the need to maintain in front of Mycroft (that Sherlock was quietly grateful for) was now apparently cast aside. Sherlock hung up his coat and carefully unwound his scarf, ignoring John as he continued to bang things around in the flat. Best to let him work the adrenaline out.

He made tea as he waited for the stomping, cursing, and clattering of objects to abate. Tea was soothing. John liked tea. The task was repetitive and trivial and let him think, although it was hardly necessary. There was no mystery to work out here; the message from Moriarty had been as clear as day.

Sherlock perched on the arm of John’s chair and handed him the tea.

“Ta,” John said automatically. Good manners were bred into him so thoroughly that even the foulest mood couldn’t touch them.

“You’re angry,” Sherlock said after a time.

John snorted. “Brilliant deductive work.”

“I’m sorry that I put you in harm’s way,” Sherlock said. “Perhaps Mycroft had a point. My involvement with you means that Moriarty has taken an interest. My proclivities have dictated the particular  _ kind _ of interest he’s taken. It’s unfair to you.” He looked down at his hands, studying them. “It’s all been unfair to you, I’m afraid.”

John leaned as far back against the opposing side of the chair as he could, in order to look at him. He sounded startled. “Sherlock, I’m not angry because of that. I’m bloody angry because you kept this from me. I’m your  _ partner _ , for God’s sake. You’ve just been suffering with this alone this whole time?”

Sherlock shifted uncomfortably. John read the answer on his face, and he sighed.

“Why don’t you trust me?” John asked, and he sounded… sad? Why would he be  _ sad _ about this, of all things?

“You’ve just learned a psychopath is out for your blood, and you’re worried that I don’t trust you. That doesn’t make sense,” Sherlock blurted, and it startled a laugh from John.

“Well when you put it that way, it does sound a bit daft, doesn’t it?”

Sherlock cracked a smile. “A bit.”

The laughter cleared some of the tension from the room, and John moved closer, leaning his shoulder against Sherlock’s side. He sipped his tea, and Sherlock relaxed into the contact. Against all reason, it seemed all was well within the walls of their flat, if not beyond. But beyond could be dealt with. His fingers twitched with the urge to wrap around Moriarty’s neck.

“I’m still angry at you,” John said, gesturing his tea in Sherlock’s direction.

“Naturally,” Sherlock said, allowing himself to be pulled out of his thoughts.

“You can’t just do things like that. Keep things like that from me.”

Sherlock felt an unusual emotion welling up. It felt like… actual remorse. John had asked him time and time again to trust him, with no recollection of prior conversations. It occurred to him that those were near-perfect experimental conditions. Over multiple trials, John had offered him acceptance and asked for trust. In that light, it hardly seemed reasonable for Sherlock to continue doubting. Skepticism is the hallmark of any true scientist, but disbelief in the face of overwhelming evidence, that was folly. Worse, it was  _ irrational. _ The realization struck him like a lightning bolt.

“I understand,” Sherlock said at last, because he hadn’t said any of that out loud, and John was looking at him expecting a response.

John set down his tea. “So,” he said. “What are we going to do about Moriarty?”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thursday's chapter is going to be a bit on the shorter side, but I've got a long chapter today to make up for it. 😘 It's kind of just how the pacing worked out.

John was doing his best to remain very, very calm.  _ Take deep breaths; avoid the urge to yell or hit anything. _ It wasn’t every day you learned a madman had apparently developed some kind of sick fixation with your boyfriend. If he thought this was like before—bombs being strapped to unsuspecting Londoners to draw Sherlock into his deranged game—he was quickly disabused of the notion. It was much worse.

He listened as Sherlock laid out the situation which was more bleak than he’d imagined.

“Jesus,” he breathed as Sherlock finished telling him about the video Moriarty had sent. How Moriarty had slipped it into his pocket, the bastard, and sent some kid to do his dirty work too. He’d asked Sherlock for the details, and now he almost wished he hadn’t.

“Who cuts up someone’s childhood best friend to send a message?”

“I would,” Sherlock said, and John gave him a sharp look. “I would, if I wasn’t concerned with staying on the right side of the law. Moriarty, he’s… dangerous. He’s like me.”

_ “Not _ like you,” John said vehemently. It was important to him, even amid all of  _ this, _ that Sherlock understood that. “You are not like him. Before you met me, were you going around hacking up the friends of your enemies?” He kept going as Sherlock opened his mouth for some smart retort, making sure he didn’t get a word in edgewise because this was  _ important. _ “You called Mycroft your arch nemesis once, when we first met. Considering that, did you feel any particular urge to cut Anthea to shreds?”

“No.”

“Damn right, no. You damn near destroyed yourself with drugs, but you didn’t hurt anyone. So no, Moriarty’s dangerous, but he’s his own kind of dangerous, and we will deal with him. But he’s not like you, and you’re nothing like him. Okay?”

“Okay.” Sherlock cleared his throat. “Yes, okay.” He brought his fingers up under his chin, thinking. “But we won’t deal with him, at least not the way that you’re thinking. We won’t be able to find him. We’ll have to wait for him to come to us.”

“You mean wait until he comes for me.”

“Just so.”

John cracked a sliver of a smile, trying to find the humor in this bizarre situation. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that you couldn’t find someone before. That you couldn’t do something.”

Sherlock was quiet. If John was trying to lighten the mood, the detective wasn’t having it. He was serious when he spoke. “I’ve never been so… compromised, before.”

“Compromised?” John’s eyebrows lifted of their own accord.

“I care for you,” Sherlock said softly. “I care about the outcome of this game. I’m not objective. It’s dangerous.”

“It’s human,” John said instead. He furrowed his brow, thinking. For all his talk of trust, he found himself at a loss, unsure whether or not he really  _ could _ take Sherlock at his word this time. He had a bad habit of keeping things from John. Something occurred to him all of a sudden. “Have you told me this before? About your friend, about all of it?”

“Many times,” Sherlock said.

Right. So, it clearly was something Sherlock wanted to talk about. Or else, it was something he himself had seen fit to bring up more than once. Somehow. Either one seemed within the realm of possibility at this point.

John settled for saying what he was thinking. “This is so fucked.”

Sherlock hummed in agreement.

* * *

As it turned out, the waiting wasn’t terrible at all. Waiting to be contacted (abducted?) by someone who wanted to fillet you like a fish was a lot like any other Tuesday. More than anything, it put John in mind of his time in Afghanistan where there were gunfights and bloodshed, but there was also boredom, jokes, normalcy. He had learned then, as now, that anything could become normal with the right mindset and enough time.

His sessions with Sherlock had quickly become normal, and now this. Life went on.

They solved another case, and then another in rapid succession. Freed from his self-enforced solitude over Chrissy’s abduction, Sherlock was in fine form once again. He was brilliant, a wildfire of intuition and intellect that put a murderer and a drug lord behind bars in quick succession, and that was all before Saturday.

Saturday.

That was the thing about time, it kept going whether you wanted it to or not. John hadn’t particularly been looking forward to Saturday night in light of everything that had happened. He couldn’t even hazard a guess as to what Sherlock might want, and he found himself quite unwilling to take matters into his own hands once more.

Sherlock would come to him, or he wouldn’t, and that was that.

He wasn’t sure which outcome he was hoping for, but 8 o’clock on Saturday night found him in their bedroom once more. He was working on his laptop when he heard the bedroom door open and close quietly. He looked up.

“Catching up on email?” Sherlock asked. He was standing in the doorway looking hesitant and nervous and, God, good enough to eat.

“Well, you know.” John felt the corner of his lip quirk up in a half smile as he closed the lid on his laptop. “Wasn’t sure if my boyfriend was going to stand me up.”

“I’m here,” Sherlock said.

Sherlock was gentle with the needle, methodical and careful, and John let his eyes drift shut as he submitted to Sherlock’s ministrations. Sherlock was always gentle with this, and the fact that he  _ knew _ that filled him with a strange sort of gratitude. It meant that he had memories to compare it to. It was one part of their relationship he didn’t feel left out of.

“So what’s on the menu tonight?” John asked when he’d pulled his shirt back down. Sometimes they kissed through this part, shedding clothes in a fervor that felt less like a medical routine and more like sex, although it was both—but not always. Sometimes they sat. Sometimes they talked.

“I’m told those are called ‘spoilers,’ John.” He bit his lip. “Do you really want to know?”

John looked away, feeling somehow embarrassed that the answer, deep down, was still  _ no. _

“That’s alright,” Sherlock said softly.

_ Coward,  _ John thought.  _ You’re a coward, John Watson, for saying such pretty things about  _ acceptance _ and  _ trust _ when you don’t even want to know what you’ll let him do in fifteen minutes. _

He could read John so well, and that was something that John had come to count on for the way it saved him having to say the things that were too difficult to speak aloud. It was something he occasionally had cause to regret too, especially when Sherlock laid John’s innermost thoughts bare. Like now.

“You tell me that I’m not a monster,” Sherlock said. “That what I am is fine. Perhaps you should extend that same kindness to yourself. Do you need to torment yourself over your own limits? You give me far more than anyone else would—or indeed, ever has. Perhaps you should accept what you are, too.”

“You do pay attention when I talk,” John muttered, but that was… shockingly insightful. “How is it you have everyone convinced you’re not good with people?”

Sherlock shrugged. “I mostly don’t care to try. Well. And perhaps I encourage the perception just a little. It’s useful, don’t you think?” He tilted his head, and his slanted eyes looked almost fey in this light. The dim yellow glow from the lamp caught on his cheekbones, made them look sharp and hard.

Sometimes this man took his breath away.

That drew a chuckle from Sherlock, and John could see a faint blush staining his cheeks as Sherlock leaned in to kiss him.

“That’s my cue, I think,” Sherlock said, and John’s mind felt fuzzy and slow as he realized belatedly he must have spoken that last bit aloud.

Sherlock reached behind him and drew a matching set of four black restraints from under the bed, and John’s eyebrows made a valiant attempt to reach his hairline. “Have those been under there this whole time?”

“Mm.”

John whistled. “Might’ve let me in on that secret. We could have some fun with those.”

“Another time,” Sherlock promised, but he already sounded distracted. He sounded like he did on a case, when his mind was barreling full steam ahead after a prize. Now he turned all that bright-burning focus on John, and it was as though his whole demeanor shifted. His earlier nervousness was gone, and there was nothing hesitant at all in the way he told John, “Strip.”

Sherlock’s eyes glittered, and the way he looked at John made all the little hairs on his arms stand on end. He thought of nonsensically of panthers, those great, sleek cats he’d seen on a trip to the natural history museum. He felt like prey, and there was something darkly thrilling in it.

“I’m going to give you a choice,” Sherlock said, and his voice rumbled slow and hypnotic. “I’m going to hurt you badly tonight. I promise you won’t like it. I’ll cut you and burn you and make you scream.” John’s voice caught in his throat. His cock twitched as something like excitement and something like fear burned through him. He wanted to fight. He wanted to run.

Instead, he licked his lips to wet them—his mouth suddenly seemed so very dry. “That’s not a choice,” John said.

“The choice is this: I can tie you down. You can yell yourself hoarse, plead for it to stop, and I will ignore you—we’ve done that before.” He took a deep breath. “Or you can stay of your own volition. I won’t tie you down, and I’ll stop if you ask it of me. Call it a test of will, if you like. We’ll see if you can make through to the end of the night without calling a halt to the proceedings.” Sherlock shrugged. “Up to you.”

John’s heart was hammering in his chest. He felt vaguely ill contemplating his lover hurting him—really hurting him. And yet the unease twisted into a sick excitement that knotted in his gut, something like the feeling of your stomach dropping out on a roller coaster. Sherlock was studying him with careful nonchalance. And John wasn’t a genius, not even close, but he had no doubt that this was  _ important _ to Sherlock. He could see it in the way Sherlock was still watching him, studying him from beneath his eyelashes, pretending to look at a nonexistent hangnail on his perfectly manicured fingers.

“I’ll stay. You don’t have to tie me up,” John said, squaring his shoulders and drawing himself up to his full height. John could pretend to consider the offer, but it would be just that—pretending. He knew without a doubt, had known for a while now, that he’d do anything that Sherlock required of him. He was suddenly very aware that he was totally naked, where Sherlock was still buttoned into one of his impeccable suits.

Sherlock let out a sigh that might have been relief, and he stood from where he was leaning against the wall. He made his way toward John, and the breath caught in John’s lungs again.

“But answer me this,” John said because, well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. “You need this, don’t you? This is about proving something to yourself.” An expression flitted across Sherlock’s face. “Or to me,” John added. “This is an experiment.”

“Everything’s an experiment, John.” Sherlock said. He hesitated. “But you’re not wrong.”

John nodded. “Well, do it, then.”

Sherlock left and returned with a small, nondescript bag. He drew things out of it one by one, setting them on the empty nightstand as John watched. A lighter; a white, tightly wrapped roll of bandages; a tourniquet; a small, unmarked bottle of a cloudy fluid he couldn’t name. He pulled out a scalpel, and a small smile lit his face—its twin took up residence of John’s when he recognized it (evidence that he’d finally lost the plot, to be sure).

“The one I took from Bart’s.”

“My favorite,” Sherlock breathed almost reverently.

“Where do you want me?” John asked. He’d said the same words at the start of all this, in a swanky bathroom sitting atop a marble counter. Memory. He clung to it.

If Sherlock recalled—he probably did, the man didn’t forget anything unless he purposely deleted it, and John knew with a surety he would never delete any of this—he didn’t give any indication. “Lie down,” he directed.

John did.

He watched as Sherlock flipped open a bottle of isopropyl and poured it onto a cloth, wiping the surface of the scalpel. The pungent scent of alcohol hit his nose almost immediately, putting him in mind of examination rooms, of the clinic, of treating patients. John had never been afraid of the doctor, although he knew from experience it was a common fear, but this was something like being a child waiting for a jab all over again. It tapped into an old sense of anticipatory dread. He tried not to fidget.

“Watch,” Sherlock said, and John did that too. He held John’s arm up so he could see it, even reclining on the bed. He watched as Sherlock slid the knife in a long vertical line down the back of his forearm, bisecting the small pink scars from last time. He watched as the gleaming metal parted flesh as neatly and cleanly as paper. The shallow cut didn’t bleed, not for long seconds, until the first seep of red started to well up.

The scalpel was so sharp that it didn’t hurt. It felt like a scratch, and then a stinging itch followed. Sherlock took his hands away, doing something at the table that John wasn’t bothered by. The Versed blunted the edge of his fear while it inhibited his capacity for reason, and John found himself fascinated by the trickling blood. The particulars of what was happening around him didn’t seem to matter as much.

It didn’t hurt until Sherlock returned to press a cold, wet cloth against the length of the cut, and John yelped. It stung like hell, like hundreds of ants biting him all at once.

“Lemon juice,” Sherlock replied to the unasked question.

“Bastard,” John said lightly, and Sherlock gave him a grin.

He turned John’s arm over and traced his knife along the inner curve of it, running it over the thin skin of his inner elbow. The blade glided over his skin without the slightest hint of pressure, leaving a red welt in its wake.

“You did this before,” John said.

“I did. But not this.” Sherlock pressed down as he pulled the scalpel, making a moderately deep cut and drawing blood. John fought down the urge to flinch, and of course Sherlock with his keen eyes caught the aborted movement. “Bad idea, that. You’ll probably want to hold still.”

John did as he was told, holding his breath as Sherlock ran the knife over his wrist, cutting into the soft white flesh there just to the side of the artery. He pulled it up John’s arm, following the line of the brachial artery and pushing down again. John could feel his heart thundering in his chest, quick and hard. It felt  _ loud. _ Sherlock drew the scalpel across his chest and down his belly, and from his position lying down, he could no longer track its movements with his eyes. Engaging his abdominal muscles to sit up and watch seemed like a bad idea under the present circumstances, so John had no way of knowing what was a cut and what was nothing more than the drag of sharp steel over his skin.

The blade moved lower, lower. It descended down his pubis, and his heart nearly stopped when Sherlock drew it lower still, tracing its cutting edge along his shaft. The word  _ don’t _ stuck in his throat, fighting to escape as he clicked his teeth shut around it. It emerged in a strangled exclamation. Not asking Sherlock to stop was part of the game, part of… whatever madness he was trying to prove tonight.

“Do you want me to stop?” He asked innocently. As if he wasn’t running a very dangerous tool over the head of John’s cock.

“You’re a bastard,” John grit out instead.

Sherlock took the knife and drew it over the sensitive flesh on the inside of his thigh, and this time he pressed hard enough that John felt the gush of something warm and wet down his legs, the smell of copper—pain, bright and hot, and a lot of it. It had been long enough now that the rest of the cuts Sherlock had given him were beginning to smart, a dull throbbing ache that called his attention to a dozen different places on his body.

But none of that was more compelling or alarming than the fact that Sherlock bloody Holmes was tracing the scalpel delicately, so delicately, down his carotid.

John gasped and tensed. “Are you purposely trying to give me a heart attack by running that knife over every artery in my body?”

Sherlock grinned, and it was positively wicked. “Yes.” He leaned down and licked the shell of John’s ear, tossing the scalpel aside. “Is it working?”

John’s answer was lost in a garbled yell as Sherlock plunged his fingers into the cut he’d made on his thigh. “Jesus fuck!”

“Have you heard of the gate theory of pain?”

John grit his teeth. “Heard of it, yeah.” Heard of it, but it was hard to concentrate when Sherlock was doing something awful to his leg, probing at the (burning, ripping, fuck) wound there. “Not quite at my best here, so you’ll have to— _ fuck _ —fill in the blanks.”

“The theory is that the body doesn’t notice pain until it reaches a threshold that the unconscious mind would consider a threat to life and limb.” Sherlock scissored his fingers apart in a grotesque mockery of the way he sometime opened John up under happier circumstances. John twisted his hands in the bed covers, fighting the urge to yell. “A clean cut will sever pain receptors, nerve heads. You might not even feel it until a mechanical stressor is introduced.

“Or a chemical one.”

Sherlock’s lip quirked up. “Lemon juice, vinegar—acids. Quite.”

John sat up to look against his better judgment and was treated to the sight of Sherlock with his fingers inside John’s body in quite a different way. Between the nauseating sensation and the visuals, John was fighting down the urge to jerk his leg away, to push Sherlock off.

It was worrying, no two ways about it. Right now he was trying to be John, loving partner of Sherlock Holmes, but he couldn’t quite turn off John the doctor; and John the doctor was very concerned. The cut on his leg would need stitches, possibly—no, definitely—layered sutures, and maybe the one on his wrist too. The sheet beneath him was sticky and dark with blood.

He thought about asking Sherlock to stop. He didn’t.

Sherlock watched him decide, then set his bloodied index and ring finger against John’s lips, applying gentle pressure until John opened. John caught on right away, catching the thread of what Sherlock wanted. He sucked his fingers clean and chased the copper taste with his tongue, probing the web that connected Sherlock’s fingers just to see the smug look fall off his face for a second, to be replaced by a familiar want that still lit John up, even now.

“Not tonight,” Sherlock murmured.

He picked up the bottle of lemon juice, and John squeezed his eyes shut tight. There was a rustle, a sudden feeling of coolness as Sherlock left his side and then returned, and then something pressed against his mouth. He opened his eyes to see Sherlock offering his own discarded belt. He didn’t know if he should say thank you. Did you say thank you to things like that? He bit down on it instead.

Sherlock soaked a new cloth and wiped away the blood from all the shallower cuts, inducing a bright stinging in the already-smarting wounds. It hurt, but it wasn’t  _ bad. _ Until Sherlock took his hand and turned his arm over, exposing the gash in his wrist. His hand was gentle as he threaded his finger’s through John’s, but his grip grew firm as he poured from the bottle, preventing John from jerking his arm away.

“Thought I’d help a little,” he said, but John ignored him. There was a toe-curling burst of pain that had him grunting into the belt in his mouth. Even after Sherlock stopped, the pain went on. He loosed his grip, and John drew his arm into his chest, cradling it protectively as it throbbed.

He spit out the belt. “Fuck.”

“How are you feeling?” Sherlock asked.

“Not fucking good,” John spat.

But Sherlock offered him the belt again, and he took it between his teeth without a moment’s hesitation. Sherlock sat on his calf, and John grunted as the detective settled his weight. The man was heavier than he looked. Sherlock tipped the open bottle, holding it at an angle just shy of letting anything spill. “I’m going to do it now,” he said, and John grunted what he hoped sound like an affirmative.

Sherlock tipped the bottle further, so that a drop of liquid spilled out to land in his wound. It burned like acid, and John’s leg jerked of its own accord. Sherlock kept it up, pouring the juice in a steady  _ drip drip drip _ that was maddening. It only got worse. John kept silent as best as he was able because it was something to focus on. Something to distract him from the fucking awful sensation in his leg, all over his body.

He started to feel floaty.  _ This might be dissociation, _ he thought. Or blood loss.

He didn’t realize his eyes were closed until he felt Sherlock’s grip vicelike on his jaw, forcing his head up. “Look at me,” Sherlock commanded.

He did.

And then he watched as his mad, beautiful lover upended the bottle of lemon juice onto the gaping, open wound he had made—the place where he had stuck his fingers into John—and he screamed.

_ The belt was a good idea, _ he thought as everything went dark.

* * *

When he came to, it was to another horrible, stinging sensation. The lights were too bright, and they were hurting his eyes. What  _ didn’t _ hurt right now? John flung an arm over his eyes and hissed at the impact. He looked. His wrist had indeed been stitched up, although it was bleeding anew now that he’d managed to smack it on his own face.

“Is it morning yet?” he asked.

Sherlock chuckled, and the sound set a cold chill down the back of John’s spine. “I’m afraid not,” came the reply. “You’re still mine for the time being, now hold still.”

John groaned. Sherlock cleaned his leg out with iodine before stitching him back together, of course without the benefit of anesthetic.

“Nice of you to let me sleep through the first set of stitches,” John said as he looked at the ceiling.

Sherlock hummed. “Not really my first choice, but I realized we don’t have any smelling salts in the flat.” He sat up to look at John, brow furrowed in thought. “Can we get some?”

John groaned again. “Nutter,” he said, but it wasn’t without affection. God, he really was touched in the head, but he loved this man. “If you want.”

Sherlock was already out of sight, bent over his task once more. The only reply was a renewed sting as he closed the gash on John’s leg. For a small mercy, the detective was quick and methodical. He didn’t draw it out, and when he was finished, the sutures were well done. John said as much as Sherlock snipped the trailing thread from his stitches.

“Practiced on a lot of cadavers,” Sherlock said.

John didn’t comment, because of course he did. “There might not be a thing left about you that would surprise me,” he said instead.

Sherlock grew very still. “That might actually be true,” he said quietly.

John sat up, swinging his leg over the side of the bed and wincing as he did. “So did you prove it?”

“Prove what?” Sherlock asked. There was his poker face, the stubborn set of jaw that said he was being pigheaded and he knew it.

John rolled his eyes, wincing as somehow even  _ that _ managed to hurt. “Whatever you were trying to prove this time. That I won’t run. That I want this. That I still won’t think you’re a monster if you pull me open to see what’s underneath my skin.”

“Yes.” He looked at his hands as if he could still see blood there, although they were now impeccably clean. He looked at John as though he were a mystery. “Why?”

John shrugged. “Because I love you.”

Sherlock looked at him, mouth opening, then closing, then opening again. He shut his mouth, and his teeth clicked together in the quiet room. He pulled John to him, heedless of his stitches. “I’ll do them again if they rip,” Sherlock murmured into his hair.

_ My mindreader, _ John thought. He wished he could remember the way Sherlock had looked at him just then.


	16. Chapter 16

Now that things were back to normal, Sherlock was seemingly answering Greg’s calls once again. They found themselves at a crime scene on Monday morning, a middle class apartment in the business district. John tried not to wince too visibly when he walked, but he felt every inch the old man. As good a job as Sherlock had done with his stitches, he’d cut him in extremely inconvenient places—over the arteries, really, Sherlock?—and they rubbed against his clothing with every move he made.

Halfway through the morning, John was sorely tempted to push his sleeves up to stop the irritating drag of cheap wool over his arms, but he resisted on sheer principle, especially after Sherlock murmured, “You should have let me buy you the merino,” into his ear. John scowled. His jumpers were just fine, thanks. It barely even hurt. Except for the fact that it very much did.

Sally kept giving him shrewd looks from where she was standing with a blonde officer John hadn’t yet met. They were discussing something, gesturing at Sherlock, at the body on the ground. John kept trying to avoid eye contact. He was feeling ill-tempered and useless. Sherlock had asked John’s initial thoughts regarding cause of death, and John had given them, although kneeling down to examine the body had been a chore. Sherlock had surreptitiously helped him up, extending a hand for leverage and making sure to grab John’s good wrist when he did it.

But since then there had been little for John to do, and he was left idly shifting from foot to foot trying to get comfortable. At this point, he was strongly considering pulling a Sherlock and taking off. Surely the world’s only consulting detective would be able to find him at home later.

But then he thought of Moriarty and the severed hand he’d planted for them to find, the sheer malice of it. Sherlock assured him that Mycroft had surveillance on him—and there was an unsettling thought, being watched by  _ Mycroft _ of all people—but even so. Probably best not to go running off in a snit.

He was lost in his thoughts, and that was why he didn’t hear Sally come up to him. She spoke and broke him out of his reverie. “Hullo, John,” she said, suspiciously cheery and sounding not at all like her usual sarcastic self. Before he could open his mouth, he was being dragged bodily away by her surprisingly strong grip.

John winced as her hand dug into a fresh cut as she led him by the arm.

“Sally, what the hell?” He was not in the mood for this today, whatever  _ this _ was.

She was stubbornly silent until she’d dragged him into the deserted hallway, and so was he. The last thing he wanted was to call more attention to whatever it was that was going on. He opened his mouth ready to tell her off, ready to defend Sherlock, because surely this was another tactic in her strangely persistent hatred of him.

He was not expecting her to demand he disrobe.

“Come again?” John asked.

“Off,” she repeated, gesturing at his jumper.

“I’m sure you’ll understand why I’m saying no.”

Sally crossed her arms. “Take it off, or I’ll report you for the illegal firearm in your waistband.” She raised an eyebrow in challenge.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” John said.

“Uh-huh. Look, believe it or not I’m trying to help you.” She sighed and scrubbed a hand over her face. “I’ve seen a lot of domestic violence in my time with the Met, and I’m not going to stand here and let it happen to you. I don’t care if you like me. Just humor me. Please.”

John hesitated, and he couldn’t help himself—he looked back towards the door to the crime scene, to where Sherlock was undoubtedly still bickering with Lestrade. He probably hadn’t even noticed John’s absence yet.

Sally followed his gaze, and her face grew hard. “John,” she said, warning.

John studied her face, trying to figure how likely it was that she was bluffing about the gun. Trying to figure if he could get away with blowing her off and walking back inside. He took in the grim set of her mouth, the dead serious expression on her face. Not very likely, then. “Fine, but look, it’s not what it—” That sounded bad. “He’s not—” That sounded worse. John sighed and reached down to pull up the hem of his jumper. Better to just get it over with. He stripped it off in one quick motion.

Sally gasped, and her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my god.”

He didn’t have to look down to know what she was seeing. There was a lattice of cuts over his arms, old ones layered over new, some deep enough to require stitches. He’d seen it himself this morning.

“So he fucks you up and then pieces you back together, is that it? If you’re afraid to leave—”

John took a deep breath, trying to hold his temper. He lost that battle almost immediately. “I’m not. And do you know what? I am sick to death of people accusing him of things. I’m a goddamn adult. I was in the army, for fuck’s sake. If you think he could do anything to me that I didn’t allow—if you think he  _ would, _ then you don’t know either of us at all. And what we do is nobody’s business, not Mycroft’s, and certainly not yours.”

“I’m just trying to help,” Sally said stubbornly. “Jesus. You’re like a walking case of Stockholm syndrome.”

“Yeah? Well maybe I’d be more appreciative of your concern if you didn’t just demand I strip for you in the middle of a crime scene.”

“Well  _ sorry _ I—” She stopped herself. “No, really, I’m sorry. You’re right, that was a shit way to handle it. I just worry.”

The unexpected apology took the wind right out of John’s righteous anger. “It’s alright,” he said, feeling suddenly awkward. “Thanks. Really, I understand the concern. It’s just… there’s been a lot of that lately.”

“His brother?” At John’s quizzical expression, she shrugged. “You said Mycroft. I listen, you know.”

“Yeah.” He scratched behind his head and winced at the tugging pull of the stitches in his wrist.

“You  _ promise _ he’s not going to go all Hannibal Lecter on you?”

That startled a laugh out of John, despite everything. “I promise. We’re good, really. He’s good.”

Sally studied his face. “For the record, I think it’s fucking weird, and maybe the pair of you ought to be locked up. But I trust you, John Watson.”

“Thank you,” he said again, and he found he really meant it. But whether for the concern or the willingness to let it alone, he couldn’t say.

She went back inside and left him the privacy to dress again. “I’ll keep anyone from coming out here ‘til you’re finished,” she said. He nodded, and then he was left alone in the hall. He chipped at a little fleck of blood on the inside of one of the jumper’s sleeves. It stood out in high contrast to the cream colored fabric. He shook his head and pulled it on.


	17. Chapter 17

Waiting for Moriarty to kidnap John was nearly intolerable. Their weekly appointment proved an admirable distraction, but it wasn’t  _ enough. _ Nothing would be enough until he could feel Moriarty’s bones crunching beneath this hands, flesh parting and blood dripping between his fingers, down his arms in gory runnels.  _ That _ would finally be enough, Sherlock was sure of it.

Little as he ever agreed with Mycroft on anything, they did agree on this, and more’s the pity—that waiting for Moriarty to show his hand was indeed the best option. Mycroft had turned his considerable resources to monitoring their flat and John himself when he was outside of it. Somehow, that knowledge made it not the slightest bit easier to watch John leave for work at the clinic.

Sherlock had kept them busy with case after case. Making up for lost time, he knew that’s what Lestrade and John thought, but no—he was more interested in keeping John by his side, constantly. Mycroft may have the whole of the British government at his disposal, but Sherlock trusted no one so much as he trusted himself.

John let Sherlock make him late for work with hungry mouth and hands, but when Sherlock tried for round two, John kindly extricated himself. He pulled Sherlock’s roaming hands off and pressed a kiss to each palm before letting them go. “We talked about this, love,” he said.

Sherlock pouted as John got out of bed. It wasn’t the most dignified thing to do, but needs must.

“But why do you have to go?” He flopped dramatically back on the bed and threw an arm over his eyes.

John chuckled, and Sherlock could hear him walking over to their shared dresser. “Besides the fact that we do still need to pay the rent?”

Sherlock waved the hand that wasn’t draped over his face for tragic effect. “I could cover it.”

John pulled on his trousers, and Sherlock moved his arm just a fraction so he could watch. The way the lean, tanned skin of John’s arms shifted as he pulled on the rest of his clothing was indeed a sight.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” John said. His face softened. “And anyway, we both decided it’s best that we keep to our normal routine. Which means it’s Wednesday, and I go to the clinic.”

“Stupid idea.” Sherlock sat up then, all earlier affectation dropped as he fixed John with a clear-eyed stare. It was a credit to John, to their growing ease with one another that John showed no signs of discomfort. His easy smile didn’t waver as he met Sherlock’s gaze and let him look his fill. “Moriarty knows that you know,” Sherlock said, entirely serious now. “It makes no matter if you hold to routine or not. He’ll have seen us drive away from the Marsters residence in a government car, and he knows we’ll have found his message there.”

His message, not  _ the hand _ and certainly not  _ Chrissy’s hand. _ Caring was not an advantage.

And yet he found himself reaching for John’s hand once more, catching it as he made to leave for good. John allowed Sherlock to pull him back into the inviting warmth of the bed, to wrap his naked limbs around John’s clothed form. He kissed him slow and lingering, nuzzling along John’s stubble and enjoying the rumbling growl it pulled out of him. But at last John, ever the dutiful doctor, pulled back with a final, firm peck on the lips.

“Don’t worry,” John said. “I’ll be back by four. Try to sleep in.”

“I never worry,” Sherlock groused, but by then John was gone and there was no one there to appreciate the lie.

* * *

The hours that passed while John was gone seemed interminable. John had suggested he sleep in, but the bed was dull and utterly uninviting without John in it. Worst of all, it was cold.

Sherlock got up and shrugged on his dressing gown, padding into the sitting room on bare feet to survey the flat. His emails were dull. He considered his violin and even plucked listlessly at its strings before setting it back down, deeming it uninspiring.

There were botanical specimens and a rainbow of cigars strewn across the kitchen table, and these were more promising. Sherlock was updating his treatise on types of ash and their identification. Now would be an auspicious time to work on the project, without John in the flat to scold him and demand he stop burning things immediately. He only made his way through three samples before the project lost its charm.

Against all odds, he  _ missed _ the sound of John stamping around making unreasonable demands:  _ Don’t use the blowtorch without proper safety equipment _ and  _ We have a million bloody mugs; can you not do experiments in my _ one good mug.

Worst of all, Sherlock found himself glancing at his mobile every 12.5 minutes on average, either to check the time (which was moving unbearably slowly) or to see if perhaps John had texted. What an unforgivable waste of time. What childish frivolity. He turned off the blowtorch and pushed it away in disgust.

Caring wasn’t an advantage, indeed. Caring was barely tolerable. How did ordinary people manage?

He settled into the cool, slouchy pleather of the couch and closed his eyes. It did little to help. If anything, it made the fears in his mind worse, made them take tangible form: Moriarty kidnapping John, strapping him to a familiar butcher’s slab. His mind was unquiet at the best of times, but with nothing to distract him, it was a din. A swelling, mounting madness that made him kick his legs out, only to immediately encounter the soft give of the couch. It was an abortive gesture, trying to get comfortable, trying to lash out—failing at both.

He was saved from what was sure to be a hellish morning by a light, familiar knock at the door. His lips quirked up in a ghost of a smile despite himself. Mrs. Hudson didn’t wait for a reply but simply pushed the door open and made her way in. Sherlock didn’t move from the couch—he didn’t know why he didn’t move. Perhaps she’d offer more comfort if he looked abjectly miserable. Manipulation, forgivable under the circumstances.

“Oh, Sherlock. Having a sulk, are we?”

“No,” Sherlock sniffed, shuffling deeper into the couch.

“Well, I brought you some tea, dear.” She wrinkled her nose as the scent of burnt tobacco ash hit. “It’s a bit gloomy in here.” She pulled open the curtains to let light in, then opened the windows to air out the flat. “There, now isn’t that better.” It wasn’t a question. It was steely, dogged optimism disguised as a question.

Sherlock’s belly grumbled, and despite his commitment to demonstrative misery, he unwound his limbs and sat up to see what his landlady had brought as an offering. Tea and toast. She smiled when she saw him looking. “Apricot jam, your favorite. Just got it in last week.”

He had some while Mrs. Hudson bustled around, tutting and straightening things. She tidied the kitchen table without disturbing any of the piles of ash, and Sherlock was cognizant of a warm affection for this woman. The tea was hot and strong, loaded with milk and sugar the way he liked it. Its fragrance was grounding, and Sherlock took a moment to close his eyes and breathe it in. Little regard as he had for his transport’s constant need for trivialities, even he couldn’t deny the soothing effect of creature comforts.

Sherlock felt stronger and more settled after nibbling on a few pieces of toast and drinking the cloyingly sweet tea. Mrs. Hudson wisely didn’t try speaking with him until after he’d finished, and even then, she waited until Sherlock cleared his throat and made eye contact. He wanted comfort, but he didn’t know how to go about getting it. This feeling was unfamiliar, and it left him feeling irritable and itchy. John made it easy.

It was to her credit and his gain that Mrs. Hudson did as well.

“Having a hard day, love?”

“John is gone,” Sherlock said, and his voice sounded plaintive even to his own ears.

She chuckled, and it was a warm sound full of affection. “You really love him, don’t you? Well, he’ll be back, never you worry.” She set her hands on her hips as inspiration struck. “Would you like to come downstairs and help me sort through postcards? The mail you two get, honestly.” She looked at him, hopeful. “You could guess where they’re from.”

Sherlock smiled, just a little. It was a tempting offer, of the sort made specifically for him. It was a kindness, and he recognized it for what it was.

“Mrs. Hudson, you are a marvel,” Sherlock said, finding that he quite meant it.

She tittered and flapped her hands, waving off the compliment but clearly pleased. “You don’t get to be my age without learning a thing or two. Give a holler if you need me, I’m right downstairs.”

* * *

Four o’clock came and went, and John was not home. Doing the shopping, probably. Sherlock had used the last of the bread for mold cultures, and he had not deigned to purchase more. John hated that. (Why hadn’t he purchased more bread for John?)

He was being ridiculous. Glancing at the time (every two minutes now) was ridiculous. He drummed his fingers along the arm of his chair, a frantic beat that did little to assuage the fever pitch starting in his brain.

At 4:24, he texted John. The answering phone call was almost instantaneous, and Sherlock felt every muscle in his body relax at once—a tension he hadn’t been aware of holding flowed out of him as he took the call and held the phone to his ear. “John?”

The voice on the other end of the line was  _ not _ John, and it sent a cold jolt down his spine as though he had been splashed with ice water. “Sherlock,” the voice singsonged. “Didn’t I tell you I’d have such fun with your pet? Didn’t I? Oh, and the fun is  _ just _ beginning.”

Sherlock dug his fingers into the upholstery of the armchair, so hard that it tore and the tips of his fingers grew white.  _ “Moriarty,” _ he grit out.

“Yes.” He drew the word out in a way that infuriated Sherlock.  _ “I’m _ Moriarty,  _ you’re _ Sherlock. Why are you being so obvious? Oh, no matter. Hurry on by, won’t you? We wouldn’t want you to miss the fun.” And then all at once, Moriarty dropped the childish affectation from his voice, and it grew deadly serious, cold and emotionless as a snake. “But not too fast. I need time to work some magic, don’t I?”

Sherlock felt like he was being choked, like a large, inescapable weight was pressing down on his chest. His vision went red, and he could hear his own heartbeat racing in his ears. He hissed low and dangerous, “If you harm a  _ single _ hair on John’s head, I will rend you limb from limb. I’ll rip out your entrails and—”

“Boooooring,” Moriarty interrupted him, singing like an imbecile once again. “Come and get him, Sherlock.”

The line went dead, and Sherlock was left holding a useless chunk of plastic and lithium. He threw it against the wall so hard that it cracked.

He was going to kill Jim Moriarty, and he was going to do it agonizingly slow.


	18. Chapter 18

The last thing John remembered was leaving the clinic to grab lunch. It was a Wednesday like any other. None of his patients had been particularly annoying, which boded well for the rest of the day. At the moment, he was looking forward to nothing more complicated than one of the sandwiches from the cafe across the street. He’d missed them over the last month when he’d predominantly been home with Sherlock. It was nice to stretch his legs and do something so absolutely  _ normal _ as grab a bite on his lunch break.

And then John didn’t remember anything, which was becoming all too familiar a sensation at this point, honestly.

But it was a Wednesday, not a Sunday, which meant this was wrong. And he did not wake up in his bed, which was also wrong.

Instead he woke up here, wherever  _ here _ was. John felt his heart pounding in his chest as he took a look at his surroundings. It looked like a warehouse of some kind, or an airplane hangar, maybe. In any case, it was utterly deserted. For one improbable moment, John felt an inkling of hope that this was Sherlock’s doing. That Sherlock had devised some kind of new, elaborate game for the two of them to play, that this wasn’t  _ real _ danger after all.

But his head cleared from whatever remnants of the drugs  _ they _ had given him, and he remembered Moriarty, and he remembered the constant threat that loomed over their lives. Reality came crashing back in, and the hope that was flickering in his chest guttered and died.

_ Sherlock, come soon. _

John took stock of his body, and there was that perverse sense of déjà vu again. It had become so normal to wake up confused, to test all his fingers and toes and seek out any pain, any cuts, any lingering discomfort from phantom causes he could not remember.

Nothing seemed to be hurt, thank god for small mercies. He tried not to think of what Sherlock had described. His childhood friend had been vivisected, he had said. Tortured. No, thinking on that would do no good at all. That way lay madness. Focus, Watson. What else can you perceive?

Right now, his arms were bound behind his back, and his feet were tied to the legs of the chair he was sitting on. Whoever had kidnapped him had done a bang up job of securing him because he couldn’t move his limbs at all, there was no slack to speak of. He tried pulling at the bonds anyway. Hard plastic—zip ties instead of rope then, not that the knowing of it helped him any.

He tried shifting his weight, rocking forward and back. Maybe if he could topple the chair, he could—

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I mean I won’t stop you, but I won’t help you either, and all that’s likely to happen is you break your nose on the way down.”

That voice. That familiar, well-bred voice set John’s teeth on edge. It put him in mind of the time that very same voice was feeding him lines through an ear piece, like a living puppet.

“Moriarty,” he spat.

The man himself stepped out from the darkened corner where he’d been lurking, and John could have rolled his eyes at the theatrics of it. If there was a man who could give Sherlock a run for his money in sheer love of the dramatic, it was this one. “Hello, Johnny boy. Long time no see.”

Moriarty looked just the same as John remembered, down to the expensive grey suit and the shoes that probably cost more than his monthly salary, which were currently clicking away on the drab, dusty concrete floor as he drew near.

John straightened, pulling himself upright as best he could under the circumstances. “Here to finish what you started, then?”

Moriarty tipped his head, and the bastard had the gall to act  _ confused. _ “What I started—? Oh,  _ no, _ that was an old game. Boring. That was before I knew just how fun Sherlock was. Before I realized how  _ bad _ the two of you were. Did you really think no one would find out?” He giggled, and the incongruous sound chilled John to the core. “No, you and I are here to play a new game.”

“Sherlock will find me, you know.”

Moriarty hummed. “Yes, he and that ghastly brother of his, I’m sure. I’m counting on it, in fact, but not before you and I have a little fun alone.”

The criminal mastermind got close, but unfortunately not close enough for John to bite or headbutt. He wisely kept every bit of himself well out of John’s limited range. He got behind John’s chair and spun it around with surprising force. The chair legs made a grinding screech as they were forcibly dragged over the warehouse floor, and John took the opportunity to take in more of his surroundings. It was just a split second, but he saw at least two exits to the back and the side of the large space, too far for him to reach on his own. For small favors, there truly was no one else here—or at least, not in this building. He had no idea what the situation was outside, but it seemed likely that the man who brought trained snipers to a business meeting would have armed guards on the doors.

The warehouse was utterly empty with at least half of the high windows destroyed, presumably by kids with rocks. Abandoned, then. Sunlight streamed in through the windows without panes, so at least it was still daytime. (Was it the same day? How long, exactly, had he been out?)

Moriarty took notice of his gaze. “I got a  _ great _ deal on this property. It’s a fixer-upper, but the privacy is to die for.”

John’s eyes narrowed on the word  _ die.  _ “Meaning no one will hear me scream.”

“You got it. Be as loud as you like—I always did like screamers.” He favored John with a grin and a cocked eyebrow that made the doctor look away, toward the towering object that was now right in front of him. It was—

“A projection screen?” John asked. It was new, so white it was nearly blinding, and it obviously didn’t belong in a place this like, unless the local junkies had taken to movie nights. “Don’t tell me your big plan is a film screening,” John said.

“Home movies, in fact. Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it. I think you’ll find these movies very educational.”

He disappeared somewhere behind John to do something—somewhere far behind John, from the sound of his receding footsteps—and the projection screen sprang to life. It was fuzzy at first, just blurs of color in muted golds and browns, until Moriarty adjusted the focus. The picture came into sickening, familiar focus just as a well-loved voice poured from the speakers.

“Take off your clothes, John.”

It hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. That was Sherlock, his voice coming from somewhere out of frame. That was Sherlock, and that was him. That was their bedroom at Baker Street.

In the present, John came alive all at once, twisting and snarling, fighting against the ties that held him fast and immobile. If he couldn’t get free, he was going to make a damn good attempt at it. “You fucking bastard,” he yelled. “What the hell is this?”

“You know exactly what it is,” Moriarty drawled. “Don’t play dumb, it doesn’t suit you.” He giggled. “It seems brother dearest was concerned about Sherlock’s extracurriculars. Isn’t that sweet? Convenient, too. There are  _ hours _ of footage here.” John felt the press of a cold muzzle against the top of his spine, heard the gun cock. “Now hold still and shut up, or this premiere is going to be over a lot faster than either you or I would like.”

John settled, still breathing hard for want of better options. He clenched and unclenched his fists, aching to lay one of them into Moriarty’s smug fucking face.

He felt the gun press against his skin more insistently, digging into the point of pain so that it would surely leave an imprint. When Moriarty spoke again, his voice was something else, it was sinister and serious. “And if I catch you closing your eyes, I’ll cut them out.”

John gritted his teeth, and he watched.

John was, first and foremost, a doctor. But before that, he was a soldier. You could take a man out of the Queen’s army, but you couldn’t take the army out of the… well. It was cliched, but if there was ever a time for cliches, it was when you were at the mercy of a madman about to be tortured.

All that to say, John was used to blood. He didn’t have a squeamish bone in his body, and he was no stranger to pain either.

With that in mind, John steeled himself for what he’d see on the videos. For the most part, it was exactly what it said on the tin: Sherlock, gleefully sadistic, hovering over him while he begged and sobbed, getting off on his anguish. It wasn’t  _ pleasant _ to watch, but it was to be expected. What he didn’t expect, though—

John didn’t expect the begging. Over and over, and in all the videos. Oh, he expected that he’d beg for Sherlock to stop, and he did. Quite a lot, actually. That was rather the point of going into this with no safeword, after all. What he  _ didn’t _ expect…

He didn’t expect that he’d like it. He didn’t expect that he’d beg, sometimes with tears in his eyes, to be allowed to keep the memories.

He didn’t expect the conversations, dozens of them—soft things, honest and raw. John found himself rapt as he listened to the words Sherlock said to him, the words they said to each other. It was surreal to watch, as though there was an actor wearing his face, looking and acting just like him but with none of his memories. As though there was a whole other Sherlock he’d never met.

He never in a million years thought he’d get something out of this arrangement, something for himself. Something besides making Sherlock happy. But there was the evidence, right there on the screen. In this video and in dozens more.

In the video, Sherlock leaned over him, blood streaked across his nose and an impossibly tender look on his face. He brushed John’s hair back from his forehead as John himself bucked and shuddered beneath him. It felt unbearably intimate, and John was suddenly, blindingly angry that Moriarty and Mycroft had intruded on this—that they had tried to take this from them.

What he and Sherlock did was no one’s business but their own. He’d said it, sure. He’d said it to Sally and to Mycroft, to defend Sherlock’s honor and get them off his back—but now he felt the rightness of it soaking right down into his bones.

Unfortunately, John’s tender revelation was not at all what Moriarty wanted to see.

“This is boring!” Moriarty yelled in an outburst so sudden it made John flinch. His fist crashed down on the projector, making the image flicker and shake before settling back slightly off-kilter to the projection screen. “‘Psychological torture is where it’s at these days. Physical torture is so passé,’” he said, imitating someone John clearly did not know. The madman gestured wildly with the knife in his hand, stabbing it in John’s direction for emphasis. “You see what I have to put up with? You see what  _ morons  _ I work with?”

“Hard to get good help these days, is it?” This was all mad, might as well play along. Maybe it would buy him some time.  _ Hurry the fuck up, Sherlock. _

Moriarty clucked his tongue. “You have no idea. Oh well. You know what they say, sometimes the old ways really are best. What do you say we skin you? I could use a new pair of shoes.”

John’s throat was all at once unbearably dry so that when he swallowed, it stuck, and he had to try more than once to force the words out. “I’d really rather you didn’t.”

But Moriarty seemed to be done talking for now, completely uninterested in any more banter with John, and he set the knife to the nape of John’s neck instead. “Don’t move,” he said, voice flinty and hollow.

John complied because arguing with the man holding a very large, very sharp Buck knife seemed like a poor idea indeed.

He didn’t cut John, not yet. Instead he sliced neatly through John’s shirt, opening the weft of the fabric so he could tear it loose. It fell away without much resistance, and John felt the sudden cold of his bare skin exposed to the chilled air of the desolate warehouse. And then a sharp, cruel point began to trace meandering loops over his back, the parts of it that weren’t held fast to the chair. The pressure wasn’t enough to break the skin, which somehow made it worse. The anticipation made it worse.

It was simultaneously so much the same and entirely different from playing these games with Sherlock. John trusted that Sherlock would never maim him, never kill him.

He trusted that Moriarty would.

“Just  _ look _ at your pulse hammering in your veins.” Moriarty wouldn’t  _ shut up, _ wouldn’t let him forget for an instant what was happening in the here and now, wouldn’t let John retreat to the quiet safety of his own thoughts.

He traced the tip of the knife down down down, following the line of John’s jugular, and John held very, very still. When at last Moriarty pulled the blade away, John let out the breath he was holding and drew in air in great, heaving gasps. “I like this game,” the consulting criminal mused. “You’re more fun than the last one, do you know that? Oh, she screamed and screamed. It’s fun at first, but it grows tiring after a time. It’s like ice cream.” He giggled at some joke that made no sense to anyone else. “Heh.  _ I scream. _ But don’t you worry, I’ll make you scream too. Shall we begin?”

He didn’t wait for an answer before selecting a spot just below John’s shoulder, on the outer edge of his bicep. He slid the knife in without further preamble, and John gritted his teeth, biting down against the urge to cry out.

“Look, Johnny boy,” Moriarty demanded, and John did not. That earned him a punch to the side of the head that had his ear ringing. “I said look!”

He did. It was a gruesome sight, watching Moriarty slice into him, seeing the blood well up as he dragged the knife down agonizingly slowly. It wasn’t anywhere near as sharp as Sherlock’s scalpel, and John felt every second of it.

Being skinned hurt. It hurt a  _ lot, _ possibly more than anything had yet hurt in his life. It hurt far more than being shot, but John didn’t cry out. He  _ didn’t _ —not until Moriarty tossed the knife aside and began to pull down on the flap of skin he’d cut loose. It hurt like fire, like hell, but the worst of it was the dull, ripping sound of skin being separated from muscle. It was positively nauseating and so deeply wrong, and oh, John screamed. He screamed long and loud.

And Moriarty laughed. His face was a twisted, grinning mask. John wondered, nonsensically, if believing in demons meant he necessarily still believed in a god. They say no one is an atheist in a foxhole, but John’s final thought before falling into comforting, perfect nothing was  _ Sherlock. _


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost there, folks! One more to go!

The first thing Sherlock did was shoot out the projector. The second was put a bullet in Jim Moriarty’s shoulder.

“John!” Someone yelled. It was him. He was yelling for John.

John was unresponsive, was tied to a chair above a pool of his own blood, was  _ alive _ , he had to be, or else—

_ “Ow,”  _ Moriarty said. He was holding his shoulder and looking nothing so much as annoyed with Sherlock for daring to shoot him. “Rude,” he spat, but Sherlock was decidedly not in the mood for his theatrics. Not now, not after he’d taken  _ John. _

“If you value your life, you’ll step away from him right now,” Sherlock said, low and dangerous. “Well away.”

Moriarty chuckled. “Sherlock,” he said, and the word was infused with a stomach-curling affection. “We both know you didn’t come here planning to let me leave alive. I think  I quite like it right where I am.” He leaned his face close to John, so close that Sherlock could see his breath ruffling the hair on John’s head. “I quite like the view.”

“Do you?” Sherlock squeezed the trigger and put another bullet in him, this time through his right kneecap. It had the satisfying result of Moriarty crying out, stumbling as his leg gave out from under him, leaking blood that looked almost black from here. “Move away, or I’ll shoot you again.”

“Fucking hell. Trigger happy with that thing, aren’t you?” The consulting criminal grimaced but did as he was told, half-dragging himself to collapse in a heap a few meters away. He left a sticky trail of fluids behind him. He propped himself up onto his elbows to watch Sherlock with unsettling, hungry eyes.

Sherlock went to John, keeping the gun—John’s gun—trained on Moriarty as he did. He put a hand to John’s neck. His skin was alarmingly cool, but there was a pulse there, thready and thin. Sherlock flicked his eyes down, just a split second to collect data, although he was loathe to take his eyes off the snake of a man in front of him. The skin had been stripped from the outermost part of John’s arm, and the sight of it filled Sherlock with a helpless rage.

“You were right about one thing,” Sherlock said quietly, locking eyes with Moriarty. “You will not leave this place alive, I swear to you.”

Moriarty rolled his eyes, but Sherlock was satisfied to see it end on a grimace. He had shattered Moriarty’s kneecap and likely scapula as well. He was favoring his right arm. “You talk too much. Has anyone ever told you that?”

He slipped his hand into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, reaching for something—a knife, a gun? Sherlock should shoot him through the heart, should shoot him in the head; it would kill him instantly. It was the safest thing to do, the most rational. And yet it appeared cold reason no longer lived here. Sherlock was firmly possessed by the desire to maim, to bleed him and make him suffer. It was a bone-deep want, and it made an utter fool of him.

Caring was not an advantage.

Sherlock hesitated for a second, just a single second between seeing Moriarty move and pulling the trigger, but it was enough to lose. Enough to lose the final game, to lose his life and John’s.  _ Stupid. _

Moriarty pulled out a detonator, and Sherlock’s breath caught in his throat. Moriarty smiled, and his teeth were limned in blood. “Yeah, probably should’ve killed me when you had the chance. Care to make any deductions?”

“The underside of John’s chair,” Sherlock said without hesitation. “Enough to level the building. You never intended on leaving here alive either.”

_ “Good. _ God, we would have made such excellent friends in another life, such great partners. You have no idea what a disappointment this is, Sherlock. Oh well.” His thumb hovered over the bright red trigger on the detonator, lowered to meet it—

“You won’t detonate it,” Sherlock blurted, sounding more confident than he felt.

He moved away from John, John who was still slumped over like a dead man, whose breath was coming thin and shallow. He walked slow and purposefully toward Moriarty, drawing his gaze. A man like Moriarty couldn’t help but gloat, couldn’t help but keep his eyes fixed on Sherlock to revel in his victory.

“Won’t I? I have to say, bluffing doesn’t suit you, Sherlock.”

A man like Moriarty tallied his wins too soon, kept his eyes fixed on Sherlock, took his eyes  _ off _ John Watson, who wasn’t really unconscious— who hadn’t been for the better part of their conversation, although a less observant man wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. John Watson, who was holding the knife Sherlock had slipped him before he’d checked for a pulse, who had just enough time to cut himself free while Sherlock kept Moriarty talking.

John Watson, who launched himself at Moriarty and knocked the detonator from his hand in what was either a stunning feat of stupidity or courage—Sherlock would have to examine the situation at a later date, but for now he was inclined to attribute it to both.

By some miracle, the warehouse did not go up in a fiery conflagration as the detonator hit the floor.

John hit Moriarty once, in the face, while Sherlock lunged at the detonator, plucking it up and well out of Moriarty’s reach. Moriarty, who spat blood and laughed. Really, that was just getting tiresome.

Apparently John thought so too. “Oh, give it a rest,” he muttered, shaking his hand (sore from impact with Moriarty’s teeth and nasal bone, no doubt) and climbing off the man.

Sherlock kept the gun trained on Moriarty, although he didn’t seem particularly inclined to get up at the moment, nor able. “Out of plays?” Sherlock asked, as much to keep him talking as anything else. He scanned the warehouse looking for additional threats, for contingency plans, but found none.

“Oh, I still have  _ one _ ,” Moriarty said, but it turned out it was difficult to sound arrogant and maniacal while bleeding out. Sherlock hadn’t hit anything too terribly important with his shots, but blood loss was blood loss.

Sherlock flicked his eyes over John—stable, not in any imminent danger of death or loss of consciousness. He tossed the gun over and John caught it in his good hand, on the side that hadn’t been ravaged by Moriarty’s less than tender mercies. Sherlock had seen one thing of interest while he was surveying the warehouse. Not Moriarty’s final gambit—he was certain the man was bluffing and that he had none. No, a knife.  _ The _ knife, in fact, the one that had been used to excise several undeserved strips of John’s flesh, as though Moriarty was  _ worthy  _ to mark John.

If Sherlock was thinking clearly, he would have correctly identified that thought as Not Good. He would have controlled himself, put the knife down, gone to comfort John and call an ambulance. Fortunately for him and unfortunately for Moriarty, rationality had left the building some time ago, and it didn’t seem likely to make a reappearance any  time soon.

He was a man on a mission. He picked up the knife. He stalked over to Moriarty slowly, a predator sighting its prey. John was saying something, but that was unimportant right now. Moriarty looked languid, smug, and utterly at ease. That was fine. Not even infuriating, really. Sherlock could do something with that. He could make it all change.

He tested the blade on his finger. It drew blood instantly, a bead of his own welling up to mingle with John’s, and that was lovely, wasn’t it? Now it was running down the deep groove that marked the side of the blade. “Sharp,” Sherlock said, approving.

“Only the best for my boys,” Moriarty said. He was pale and growing weak. His words came out on a cough that brought up pink-tinged sputum.

“Nothing in here is yours,” Sherlock corrected him, a dangerous glint in his eye. “Not John, nor I. Not this knife. And certainly not your life. That was forfeit the moment you threatened John.”

“Not Chrissy?” Jim asked, a knowing smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. “You should have seen her scream. But wait—you did, didn’t you?”

“Don’t be tiresome,” Sherlock said. He saw no need to dissemble. “Sharp,” he repeated again, crouching down over Moriarty. “How unnecessary.” Sherlock dragged the cutting edge of the knife over the concrete floor. It drew forth a spectacular screech. It ruined the blade. He grabbed Moriarty’s arm and tested the blunted edge on the man’s skin. It wouldn’t cut, not at first, but enough pressure was the key, as in most things.

He pressed harder, and a well of red opened up as Moriarty’s mouth opened on a howl. What perfect symmetry.

“You fancy yourself a psychopath, a villain,” Sherlock said, dragging his knife down Moriarty’s arm, making it hurt, making it  _ bleed. _ He spit on Jim Moriarty because he could. “You don’t know what a villain is. I will strip every bit of flesh from your bones, and I’ll keep you alive while I do it. I’ll feed it to you and cut off your eyelids to make you watch.” Sherlock laughed, and it came out as a giggle, high and thin and utterly mad. “You will wish you’d never met me, I swear to you.”

John was speaking—no, John had  _ been _ speaking; be precise—but now he was yelling. Shouting, getting more insistent until something of it finally penetrated the bloodlust that had settled firmly around Sherlock’s mind like an obscuring fog.

“Oy!” John yelled. “Stop.” His voice carried chains of command, carried combat boots and desert sand and the title of Captain. But more than that, it was his. It was the voice that pulled Sherlock back from every ledge and every brink. He stopped. He listened, knife poised to do deadly damage.

“Choose, Sherlock,” John said. He was wincing— _ wincing _ . That monster had hurt him. Sherlock refocused, trying to make sense of the words that were coming out of his mouth when everything within him was screaming out for Moriarty’s blood.

“What?” Sherlock asked, feeling for once stupid and slow. Feeling nettled by the unfamiliar sensation.

“Choose,” John said again, staggering to his feet. He was unsteady from blood loss. It made Sherlock want to reach out, want to go to him and steady him, but he was utterly unwilling to take the knife from where it was resting against Moriarty’s throat. “Him or me.”

That made no sense.

“You go on and do—whatever it is you want to do to him, I won’t stop you. God, I don’t think I  _ could, _ but you will never have me like that again.” Comprehension dawned as did hope beyond hope, and John shook his head ruefully. “I don’t know that I could stand it. I love you dearly, Sherlock Holmes. I love every part of you, from the mad, brilliant top of your head to your ridiculous toes, but I don’t know if I could stand to watch you become just like him. That’s not the Sherlock I know.” He raised his chin in defiance. “That’s not the man I fell in love with.”

Sherlock hesitated. He wanted this so bad he could taste it, wanted it all the more when Moriarty’s hated face split into a bloody grin below him, wide-eyed as he egged Sherlock on. “Oh, come on, Sherlock, do it.  _ Do it. _ You know you want to.” He threw back his head so hard it hit the concrete floor with a sickening thud, and he cackled like a ghoul. “Oh,  _ do it. _ You’re just like me, Sherlock. Just like me. Let’s take this baby full circle, won’t I look  _ good _ on your mantelpiece?”

Sherlock tightened his grip, pressed the blade to Moriarty’s throat so that it drew a thin, red line that started to trickle lazily. (It takes 150 milliseconds to arrive at a decision.) He growled and shoved Moriarty away to crumple on the ground like a pile of rubbish. He threw the knife down at John’s feet, a blooded offering.

Moriarty howled with laughter. “Pathetic—” he got out when his fit of mirth allowed speech once more, but the thought began and ended there. His head exploded in a fine spray of blood and brain. Sherlock was close enough to smell it, to feel the mist of it against his cheeks, copper stinging his eyes (glorious). There was a hole where the front of his face used to be.

“Looked like he was going for the knife to me, didn’t it?” John deadpanned.

Sherlock stared at him, mouth agape. Words failed him again.

“I didn’t want to watch  _ you _ become a murderer, love.” John said softly. “That didn’t mean for a second I was going to let him live. He’s done enough to both of us.” He turned steely eyes on the corpse, not a drop of warmth left in him. All of his warmth was for Sherlock alone. “More than enough.”

Sherlock shivered. His beautiful killer, death-dealer wrapped in cotton wool. Oh, how he loved this man. More than corpses, more than life itself. He wanted to crawl inside John and drink his blood, wanted to lick him clean from head to toe. Maybe that  _ was _ good. John loved him anyway.

He looked at the body. It was a neat shot. There was a bullet hole directly in the center of Moriarty’s forehead, and his eyes stared out wide and unseeing. He looked surprised even in death.

Sherlock cleared his throat and found the ability to form words once again. “Yes, well. He wasn’t a very nice man, was he?”

John stared at him, incredulous for a moment as he recognized the sentiment—a shared joke, another murder on Sherlock’s behalf forever and ever ago. His beloved doctor’s face split into a smile, into a bark of laughter that ended on a strangled moan because he had still been skinned by a madman just hours before.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made it to the end! 🎉 Thank you to everyone who came along on this ride with me. It was a real joy to tell this story to all of you! I’ve loved reading your comments so so so much.
> 
> A giant thank you especially to [tei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tei)— your enthusiasm for this idea was contagious, and I’m pretty sure this story’s existence is thanks in large part to you. 💜

Sherlock had torn off to rescue John in a mad dash, but he’d had the presence of mind to call Mycroft first, even under such dire pressure. That’s literally all he’d done—dial the number that went directly to Mycroft’s emergency line (to the phone he thought Sherlock didn’t know he had)—before shoving his mobile back in his pocket and running out of the flat. Every once in a great while Sherlock was glad to have an older brother cleverer than he, although he’d never say so out loud.

Instead he said, “Took you long enough,” when he heard the clipped staccato beat of Mycroft’s shoes on the concrete floor. Only him. He must have ordered the rest of his people to wait outside; he knew Mycroft too well to think he’d come here alone. It was a ploy to give the three of them privacy, perhaps. Daring acts of ~~heroism~~ ~~stupidity~~ heroism weren’t really Mycroft’s style. That was really more of his and John’s area.

“Yes, well if someone had deigned to speak up and give a proper address, perhaps I’d have been here faster.”

Sherlock snorted. “Like you don’t have remote access to the GPS of every phone in England.”

Mycroft sniffed and didn’t dignify that with an answer. “Doctor Watson, you seem to be in need of medical assistance. And,” He looked down at Moriarty’s rapidly cooling corpse. It was to his credit that the body barely gave him pause. His only tell was a too-rapid blink and a momentary hiccup in his speech pattern. Someone who knew him less well than Sherlock wouldn’t have been able to tell at all. “James Moriarty seems in dire need of a coroner. I don’t suppose the pair of you would know anything about that.”

John pulled his shoulders back and poorly concealed the wince. Surely that movement must be causing him a good deal of pain. “He was going for the knife,” John said, kicking it toward Mycroft. His gaze was fixed straight ahead, the soldier giving a report. Sherlock felt a sudden, overwhelming rush of tenderness for him. His doctor. His killer. His healer.

Mycroft was not at all similarly affected by the display. He made a minute, restrained facial expression that would have been a heaving sigh and dramatic eyeroll on any other man. “Yes, I’m sure he did so impressively quickly, especially with a shattered patella and severe blood loss.” He sighed and shook his head. “I’ll see that it’s taken care of.”

Sherlock went over to John without a word, offering his arm. John grabbed it with bloody fingers and allowed Sherlock to steady him as they made their way outside.

Mycroft hung back, punching numbers into his mobile. Sherlock glanced behind, and Mycroft waved him off. He didn’t need to be told twice. From behind them, he heard Mycroft mutter, “God, I hate field work.”

John  _ did _ need medical attention. Now that the adrenaline of the moment had worn off, he’d be feeling the full brunt of the skin stripped from his arm sooner rather than later. Sherlock looked down at his arm surreptitiously and swallowed against the hysterical nausea that the sight prompted in him. He could see the muscle of John’s arm, red and gleaming. Several apologies got caught in his throat at once, so that they stopped it up and none of them came out.

John gave his arm a squeeze, and Sherlock pressed a careful kiss to the top of his head. He hoped it felt like an apology.

He steered John to an ambulance (fake, but it was a very good fake) and handed him over to a man waiting with a clean cot and a morphine drip. It was a testament to how much his mind was still reeling that he didn’t give the IV bag of morphine so much as a lingering look. He hovered, keeping a watchful eye on John although he knew it was unnecessary. These were Mycroft’s people. They’d have been vetted as thoroughly as humanly possible.

A light touch on his arm caught Sherlock’s attention. Mycroft. He gave Sherlock a look and let his hand fall. They weren’t men for touching. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d hugged Mycroft—childhood, probably. He’d deleted it.

Sherlock let himself be led. He followed Mycroft as his brother pulled him aside, away from the false ambulance and the cadre of agents sweeping the warehouse and surrounding area for more explosives.

“They won’t find anything,” Sherlock said.

“No,” Mycroft said. “They probably won’t. Still, best to check, don’t you think?”

Sherlock didn’t reply. He let his eyes wander, back toward the gravitational force that pulled them.

John was being tended by government spooks dressed up as paramedics. He was already gone on morphine and smiled wide and brilliant at Sherlock when he caught his eye. He waved. Sherlock felt his own lips being tugged up of their own accord, and he hazarded a small wave back. A female agent with her red hair in a ponytail—the one managing John’s morphine drip and stitching up the least severe wounds—bid John lay back. Sherlock could tell from her gestures, even at this distance that rendered hearing her exact words an impossibility. John, currently pliant with drugs, complied obediently. The model patient.

“I’ve destroyed the tapes,” Mycroft said softly. Sherlock swallowed hard and resisted the urge to glance around. He didn’t have to ask what tapes.

They were far from the center of the action, and Mycroft’s men would have no interest in his personal life anyway. Still, old habits died hard, and even after all this, all they had went through, Sherlock still felt a sneaking tendril of shame trying to rise toward the surface. He tamped down on it hard. John deserved better than his lingering doubt.

“Thank you,” Sherlock said instead. He felt a childish urge bubble up, the desire to justify himself. To excuse his actions, to prove—

Mycroft’s hand touched his, just briefly, a glancing brush that could have been an accident. It would be so easy to delete that later, if necessary.

* * *

They were back home at 221b a few days later. John had required a blood transfusion and a split thickness skin graft. The healing, grafted skin on his left arm was puce-colored and bruise dark when Sherlock helped him change the bandages. He was getting better at looking at it without feeling sick and angry at the thought of Moriarty taking a knife to John’s flesh, but in that arena, Sherlock kept his thoughts to himself.

John was healing, and he was home. He shouldn’t have to deal with Sherlock’s eccentricities and rage at a now-dead enemy on top of whatever trauma he himself faced. Although on the trauma front—there were surprisingly few signs of it. John seemed to be in good spirits, if a little cranky when Sherlock made him eat, and shower, and take his medication.

Sherlock had sat through the surgical consultation and John’s discharge instructions taking notes. John had still been on quite a lot of painkillers at that point, and Sherlock felt responsible. He was adamant that John keep the wound dressed in clean bandages and moist per the (very expensive, procured by Mycroft) surgeon’s orders, despite the way John rolled his eyes and reminded Sherlock that he was a doctor.

John was a doctor, but he was Sherlock’s  _ everything, _ and despite his protestations (gentle, not deeply meant), he allowed Sherlock to tend to his wounds, both the one on his arm and the donor site on his thigh.

Sherlock had shut off his mobile three days ago and surprisingly hadn’t felt so much as an idle urge to check it, not his mobile nor his email. He was acutely aware that everything that mattered—his entire world—was currently propped against a set of tatty, threadbare pillows, beginning to get tetchy about his enforced bed rest. John complained, but that was fine—let him complain. He was alive to do it. Alive, (mostly) whole, and safe with Sherlock.

They were currently engaging in what had quickly become their default activity: lying in bed with their limbs tangled, carefully arranged so that Sherlock wasn’t putting pressure on any of John’s wounds. The afternoon sun filtered into the room in shades of riotous orange, and the two of them lay with their foreheads together. Sherlock was neither asleep nor awake but drowsing in some middling, in-between state. This was meditation. He cataloged every precious, dear thing about John: the slight sourness to his breath, the thump of his heart against Sherlock’s hand, the grooves in his face that went slack and smooth in sleep.

Sherlock opened his eyes. John wasn’t sleeping now; Sherlock could tell by his breath, although his eyes were still closed. As though there was an invisible string that tethered them one to the other, John opened his eyes only a moment later. Sherlock watched as his pupils contracted against the afternoon light, as John’s eyes focused as they found his.

The expression on his face was dear and beloved and so strangely serious in this moment.

“I’m sorry,” John said. His voice was soft, but in the silence, it was the loudest thing in the room. Sherlock swallowed and fought against the urge to close his eyes. The intimacy here was blinding.

“For what?” Sherlock asked, and for once, he wasn’t being clever. His voice was ragged from disuse, so he swallowed once more and tried again. “What could you possibly have to apologize for?”

John closed his eyes again, and Sherlock waited. He was still for so long that Sherlock thought perhaps he really  _ had _ fallen asleep this time, but when Sherlock began to roll over, John’s hand shot out viper-quick to circle his wrist. His grip relaxed instantly, and the message was clear:  _ Stay. Please. _

Sherlock stayed and was rewarded by John’s bright blue eyes opening again. “For not giving you a reason to trust me from the beginning.” He held Sherlock’s gaze, and it burned through him—the raw, nearly unbearable intimacy of it. “For needing time to accept all of you.” John’s mouth quirked up in a sad smile. “How can I criticize Mycroft for making you feel like a monster when I did the same?”

“You didn’t—” The words tumbled out of Sherlock’s mouth. He couldn’t get them out fast enough because John had to  _ know. _ He’d said more beautiful words last time, but that was fine. Beauty wasn’t the goal. Truth was. “You haven’t done anything wrong. You, John Watson, love me better than anyone I’ve ever known. Better than I thought anyone could. Please don’t—” He rolled over. He wanted to be sitting up for this. “Don’t shame yourself for having boundaries.”

John pushed himself upright as well, only wincing a little at the motion. It was heartening to see him growing stronger by the day.

“Well maybe I can get it right this time. Better late than never.” John reached down and opened the bedside cabinet while Sherlock watched with interest. He pulled the Versed from the shelf and placed it atop the nightstand, then the plastic bag full of unused syringes. He pulled out the bottle of iodine and hesitated. “Maybe we’ll keep that one,” he said to himself and tucked it back in the cabinet.

And then as Sherlock watched, John brushed the half-full bottle of Versed and the hypodermic needles into the wastebasket with one sweep of his hand.

“I don’t think we’ll be needing these anymore,” John said.

Sherlock fought against the small twinge of disappointment that mounted in him. After all that John had been through, of course he didn’t want to do those things with Sherlock anymore. Of course—

John was looking at him with a grin. He cocked an eyebrow.

Of course. John had asked him to choose, back in the warehouse. And he had chosen John.

The knowledge felt like dawn breaking. He got to  _ keep _ John, in that way, and all other ways. A wide, easy grin slicked itself over Sherlock’s face in answer to John’s, and John closed the gap to wrap his lover in his arms.

“Oh, you wondrous thing,” Sherlock breathed against John’s lips.

John kissed him soundly, and it was full of trust, and affection, and many other things besides.

“Took you long enough,” John said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I totally plan on writing in this same universe again in the future, probably with a sequel and maybe a few companion one-shots. I find this particular Sherlock and John incredibly fascinating and satisfying to write.
> 
> You can check out my [original writing here](https://hopezane.com) if you're interested.
> 
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